The Pattonville High School speech and debate team is proud to invite you and your team to the 49th annual Randy Pierce Winter Classic. This tournament will be held in-person on December 13th and 14th. We are thrilled to announce that we are a new NIETOC qualifier tournament, and we plan to offer ALL MSHSAA and NSDA events, pending entry numbers.

 

This year, we will offer competition at three levels in Debate (Novice, Reg, and Champ), and two levels in Speech and Congress (Novice, Champ). For Novice events, the student or team must be entirely in their first year of any high school speech and debate competition to be entered.  This division is about supporting our new students, and I will not hesitate to DQ people to preserve this. For Reg Debate, please enter post-novices, or novices looking to take a step up. No one in Reg should have made the state or national tournaments for that event, or be in their third or fourth year in that event.  Please contact me regarding any questions about the divisions.

 

In an effort to grow the tournament, and regrow interest in our area, we will have no caps on entries.  Bring all of your novices, all of your varsity, and let's get some fun and educational rounds in! All speech and debate have 3 prelim rounds, with debate breaking to quarterfinals (if possible), and speech breaking to finals. The idea is more rounds for students who want and need practice. Congress will also have 3 prelim rounds of an hour and a half, breaking to the same length final round. 

 

Awards will be given to all students who break in any event except Congress. Congress will award top 6 only in super session.

 

Students need to respect the classrooms they enter and return them to how they found them previously.  If we have teachers come back on Monday to messy rooms, it makes it much harder to get them to continue to allow us to use their rooms!

 

The Pattonville PTO will be operating a concession stand and will have a card reader! 

 

We are asking that coaches be available to judge as needed, especially on Friday for debate rounds 1 and 2 when a lot of parent judges may not be available yet. We ask that you have 1 judge available minimum, and an additional for every 8 debate entries and 12 speech entries. Parent judges are welcome, please have any of your judges fill out the linked form. Please register yourself as a judge to help us in that regard. Any varsity members who do not advance are welcome to contact us during the tournament to be added to the pool. Please remember that students must be in their second year of competition with at least 150 NSDA points to judge.

 

Please register through SpeechWire by Tuesday, December 13rd at 5:00pm. No additional entries will be accepted after this time. Names can still be changed after this time, and drops can be made, but no switching of divisions or new entries after this time. If, at this time, entry numbers are low, we will possibly collapse things, but the goal will always be to preserve the novice division and your student's ability to get practice. 

 

(vr24)