Dear Coach and Team:

The Fort Osage Chapter of the National Forensic League cordially invites you to our 2017 New Year Kickoff, to be held January 6 & 7, 2017. We are pleased to partner with Grain Valley High School this year.  Fort Osage will host the Varsity competition and Grain Valley will host the Novice. Our Varsity tournament is also a National Individual Event Tournament of Champions (NIETOC) bid tournament and students advancing to qualifying rounds will earn one official bid for the 2017 NIETOC Championship hosted at Liberty North HS on May 12-13, 2017.

Fort Osage will host the following varsity events: Champ Lincoln-Douglas, Regular Lincoln-Douglas, Champ Public Forum, Regular Public Forum, Champ Policy and Regular Policy, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Duo Interpretation Program Oral Interpretation (POI), Poetry, Prose, Storytelling, International Extemp, U.S. Extemp, Original Oratory, Informative Speaking, and Congressional Debate.

NEW EVENT: We will also be offering Big Questions Debate this year.  This will be run independently during IE rounds and participants may not enter any other IE events.  Individuals and Teams may be entered to compete against one another.  There will be four rounds with 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd places being awarded insignia NSDA plaques. It is also an opportunity for your debaters to qualify to the national tournament, where the top 50 Big Questions Debaters will be competing.  If you haven’t already, check out https://www.speechanddebate.org/big-questions/ for more information on this new event. I will be sending out a separate emailing for registration.

The debaters will have four rounds of preliminary competition, breaking to quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. Individual Events will have two preliminary rounds, breaking to semifinals and finals. Congress will have two preliminary sessions breaking to a final two-part Super Session.

Each school must be accompanied by a coach or qualified adult sponsor who will need to be available to judge, if needed.   If you request extra entries, please plan on bringing judges to cover your extra entries. Also, if you know of any recent grads and/or adults that would be willing and able to be a judge at our tournament, please let us know.

Except for Big Questions Debate, for which we will use email and paper, we will be using SpeechWire Tournament Services, and registration will be online through the website, www.speechwire.com. Our entry deadline is Friday, December 16th, 2016, before kids leave for break. There will be an opportunity to adjust entry numbers after we get back from break.  Entries will be guaranteed two per event, with wait-listed entries being granted as equitably as possible.

We look forward to hosting you at our tournament.  If you have any questions email or call Bobby Phelps at 816-650-7263 (room) or 816-204-0842 (cell).

Sincerely,

Bobby Phelps                                      Quinn Foose & Elias Vaoifi               

Director of Speech and Debate        NFL Chapter Co-Presidents  

Tournament Co-Chairs