***It is a huge help to know how many of the extemp readers are doing prose and how many are doing poetry.  DITTO for knowing whether the extemp speakers are choosing Domestic or Internation.  If you have students competing in this category, I would truly appreciate a quick note to that effect. I don't need to know the specifics for each student, just the overall numbers. THANKS!

 

 

JUDGES: Your school must provide one judge for every six entries or fraction thereof.  Experienced senior high speech team members (preferably at least two years of experience) may be used as judges. We tend to have some very small sections among our healthier-sized ones, so we absolutely need to have that minimum of one judge per six students, and if you are blessed with an abundance of varsity students willing to judge, please bring them! 

 

Our tournament is small enough that it is difficult to honor requests for judge preference, so I have set all judges to EITHER. We will do our best to ensure that no one has to judge a member of their own team, but it has happened on rare instances. Instead, please block a judge from specific team members or categories that they should NOT judge in order to give us maximum flexibility. Please do the same with parent judges, but any coach probably needs to prepare for the possibility that they may need to judge a team member. I will avoid that to the best of my ability, but... 

 

If you have any clean judges, please be sure to include that information in the judge registration. 

 

I don’t anticipate having any judges available to hire, but if you are desperate, let me know and I will try.  The cost for a hired judge would be $75. 

 

There will be a lounge for coaches and judges in our FACS room, A149. 

 

 

FOOD:

Teams have ordered pizza in the past, but I am wondering if serving spaghetti with sauce (choice of meatless or with meat) might be a better option. If I know there are students that need gluten-free, I will make sure there are gluten-free spaghetti for them. I think we could do that for about $3.00 per person, including pop or water and dessert. What do you think?  I could change the entry fee to reflect the meal cost if you like the idea. Otherwise, even if you like the idea for the meal, you could collect from the kids like you have in past years with the pizza.

 

If I hear from coaches that pizza is the preference, we will offer the choice of sausage, cheese, or pepperoni from a local chain, probably Domino's, at cost, with a small surcharge for tax and tip. I will then set up a meal choice option on Speechwire. I still need to check on the price but will have that information up by Friday, Jan 23. I ask that you enter a preliminary pizza order by Friday, Jan 30 so that I can give the restaurant a ballpark figure for their own planning purposes. Final numbers for pizzas need to be on the site by the registration deadline of 3 p.m., Wednesday, Feb 4.

 

Either way, whether pizza or spaghetti, since SSP no longer sells pop in our vending machines, I will supply a variety of pop for the students. Students can, of course, purchase other treats from our vending machines or bring their own sack lunch. 

 

 

ARRIVAL:

School lets out at 2:30, and the parking lot (east side of the building) is pretty crazy until 2:45. I would advise NOT arriving until after that time.

 

 

Sincerely,

Ceil