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The Hawken School Speech & Debate team cordially invites you and your team to attend the 9th Annual Larry H. Banks Memorial Invitational in honor of our team's founder. This year's tournament will be held in person on Saturday, November 8th, and we have added a PDQ for Policy with three additional ON-LINE rounds of competition for Policy only on Friday, November 7th.

Some changes from last year: Our school will be having a visiting team arriving on Sunday for our reaccreditation (which independent schools need to do every 7 years.) Therefore, our administration has asked us to run a somewhat shorter tournament than we have in the past to give our maintenance staff more time to clean on Saturday afternoon. We therefore will only hold preliminary chambers of congress this year with no final session. We will stick to 4 rounds of PF and LD. We WILL offer a policy PDQ (assuming we have 18 policy teams register.) However, we will only offer one elimination round of policy. We intend on ending all competition by 2:00 pm (or 2:30 pm at the latest.) We intend on starting awards by 3:00 pm and ending by 3:30 pm.

The OSDA “welcomes everyone, regardless of age, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or political affiliation, to participate with equal opportunity in the Speech and Debate community within our participation guidelines.” We stand by this promise.

IN THE INTEREST OF EQUITY, WE ASK ALL JUDGES TO CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:

We are all influenced by implicit bias, or the stereotypes that unconsciously affect our decisions. When judging, our implicit biases negatively impact traditionally marginalized and disenfranchised students. Before writing comments or making a decision, please take a moment to reflect on any biases that may impact your decision making.

This is an in-person tournament in the Cleveland District except policy rounds 1-3 on Friday. All other events for this tournament, including policy round 4+, on Saturday will be live and in person.

****PLEASE NOTE THAT BECAUSE THIS TOURNAMENT WILL USE ON-LINE BALLOTS, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT COACHES ENTER A VALID EMAIL FOR EVERY JUDGE AND COMPETITOR.****.

TOURNAMENT LOCATION:

All Events and Awards will take place at the Hawken School Gates Mills Campus, 12465 County Line Road, Chesterland, OH 44026.

We will offer all OSDA events for high school competition only. We will not run a separate novice division but will recognize the top novice in each event. Please register your novices with the "NOVICE" distinction so we can give these recognitions.

We will not offer Big Questions Debate this year.

INDIVIDUAL EVENTS:

We will offer a total of four (4) rounds of competition and double entry is allowed in all speech events except Extemporaneous Speaking.

POLICY DEBATE:

We will offer five (5) rounds of preliminary competition (3) VIRTUAL prelim rounds on Friday afternoon/evening and 2 in person prelim rounds on Saturday morning plus one elimination round. We will be using the 2025-2026 NSDA Topic, Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly increase its exploration and/or development of the Arctic.

LINCOLN DOUGLAS DEBATE AND PUBLIC FORUM DEBATE:

We will offer four (4) rounds of competition using the November/December NSDA Topic in both events. We will not use the LD novice topic and will not run a separate novice division, but we will recognize the top novice in each of these debate events.

STUDENT CONGRESS:

We will be utilizing the November docket assigned from the OSDA. We will not have a final round of congress this year. We will be scoring based on judge preference. We will also be using direct questioning.

SCHEDULE:

Registration for policy will take place virtually at 3:30 pm on Friday afternoon.

Registration for all other events will take place from 7:15-7:45 on Saturday morning.

Hawken will provide a singular Google doc to all coaches and judges in our Friday email so that only one link is needed to get to everything at the tournament. Throughout the tournament, we will post announcements there as well as share information with coaches, judges, and competitors.

We have posted the schedule for rounds, but these times are approximations. Judges and competitors are responsible for following notifications of actual times as they are sent out.

Awards - 3:00 pm or ASAP thereafter for everyone at the Gates Mills Campus

DEADLINES:

We ask for your registration to be as accurate as possible by noon on Friday, October 31. This is important because our kitchen needs a reasonably accurate count so that they can order food.

Deadline to add/drop entries: Tuesday, November 4th @ 12:00 pm

Deadline to add/edit judges: Thursday, November 6th @ 8:00 pm

*ENTRY FEES LOCK AT 12:00 pm on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4th – ANY DROPS AFTER THAT POINT WILL INCUR THE ENTRY FEE ASSOCIATED WITH THAT ENTRY.

REGISTRATION FEES:

$24.00 per PF team, Policy, and Duo team and $12.00 per entry in all other events. This fee includes the $5.00 per person entry fee plus a $7.00 per person charge for the hot lunch that will be served by our dining staff. NOTE: We will make a fee adjustment so that speech students who are double-entered will only pay the $7 for lunch once. (We do not make any money off of our tournament. We merely aim to break even. Food service costs have increased dramatically.) The lunch will include vegetarian and gluten free options. You may pay by check or cash at registration. Because our dining facility is open and doesn't have a method for collecting money or selling individual items, this lunch fee is not optional. Lunch is free for all judges and coaches. Coaches may contact Bob Shurtz at rhshurtz@gmail.com with any questions or special circumstances. We want every team to have access to our tournament, so please let us know if cost is a barrier for your team.

JUDGE REQUIREMENTS:

IE: One (1) judge for every five (5) IE entries (a Duo team counts as one entry)

PF/LD/CX: One (1) judge for every 2 debaters/teams.

Congress: One (1) scorer or parliamentarian for each school that has Congress entries.

All judges will be served lunch at no charge.

HIRED JUDGING INFORMATION:

We will have some judges available for hire if you are unable to cover your judging commitment. ALL HIRED JUDGING REQUESTS MUST BE MADE BY TUESDAY, 11/4 AND APPROVED BY THE TOURNAMENT ON A FIRST COME BASIS – Please use this link to request a judge.

FEES ARE ASSESSED FOR EVERY UNCOVERED ENTRY:

$10 per uncovered CON entry

$10 per uncovered IE entry

$35 per uncovered LD/PF entry

$40 per uncovered Policy team per day - However, it is unlikely that we will have any policy judges available to hire, but we will try.

TWO OPTIONS FOR PAYMENT:

Cash or Check Payable to Hawken School at Registration

MAIL PAYMENT FOR FEES TO:

Attention: Bob Shurtz

Hawken School

PO Box 8002

Gates Mills, OH 44040

AWARDS:

Trophies or plaques will be awarded to the top six placements in all events.

School sweepstakes will be presented based on the top competitor in each event for each school.

We will recognize the top novice in each event.

There will be a team sweepstakes trophy or plaque for the top 6 teams.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Bob Shurtz at rhshurtz@gmail.com

We look forward to hosting you on Saturday, November 8th and virtually on Friday Nov 7th for the first 3 rounds of policy competition.

See you soon,

Rachel Warnecke, Bob Shurtz, Eva Lamberson, Lynn Beason, Kate Mozynski, and the Entire Hawken School Speech & Debate Team