Randolph Fall Classic

Registration	General information	Schematics	Files for download	Tournament schedule	Fees	Registration handbook

General information

This is a High School tournament in New Jersey.

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Dear Speech and Debate Coaches and Moderators:

The Randolph High School Speech & Debate Team is pleased to invite you to the 36th Annual Randolph Fall Classic Speech & Debate Tournament to be held on Saturday, November 23, 2024. We are very excited to be hosting our tournament IN PERSON. We will be offering competition in many different events at various levels of competition this year – including a middle school division! We are hoping to hold our World Schools Debate in-person, but can offer it virtually if there is sufficient interest! We are also excited to announce that we can offer NIETOC and TOC bids depending on the event and tournament size! Please try to sign up as soon as possible – as the school will have limited space and we will have to cap events based on previous history of this tournament!

We are excited to use our tournament for good once again this year, and we are offering a small prize for the team that donates the most to our drives. As teams check in during registration, there will be a coach registering donations and keeping track of points to award our prize.

Judging Requirements:

We will adhere to all judging requirements common to the NJSDL and explained further in this document. We also ask that all judges take advantage of the judging courses offered through the NSDA at https://www.speechanddebate.org/learn/judge-accreditation/

Middle School Divisions:

This year, we are excited to offer several events specifically for our middle school students! These include Declamation, Interpretation, Oratory, Congress, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Public Forum Debate. While the running of these events will ultimately depend upon interest and numbers from registration, we hope to offer all of these events for our youngest members of the league. If divisions have to be collapsed, every attempt will be made to keep middle school students competing against other middle school or novice high school students. Please ensure that you complete registration correctly, signing up high school students for high school events and middle school students for middle school events. If there are any questions, please contact me directly at kburke@rtnj.org.

Food:

We will be offering an option to pre-order lunches. Coaches will be able to complete this order during registration. More information will come out closer to the event. Packaged snacks will be sold in the RHS Commons (cafeteria) and food will be provided for judges. Breakfast will be served from 8:00am to 8:30am. Lunch will be provided at posted times during the day.

E-Ballots for All Events:
We will continue our use of e-ballots this year. Once again, we need you, the coaches and moderators, to ensure clear communication to your judges about this. Please ask ALL judges, both speech and debate, to ensure that they have access to a device that they can complete their ballots on, as well as any necessary equipment (i.e., chargers). We recommend using a laptop or computer, rather than a phone or iPad.  E-ballots are incredibly easy and intuitive – they have been used to great effect at many local and national tournaments. We will again train any new judges on the process the morning-of. We would again like to stress that all events will be using e-ballots and we will not have devices to lend out for judges.

EVENTS & COMPETITION

Our tab rooms will be staffed with Randolph student officers, coaches, and other NJSDL officers and board members and volunteers.

All NSDA and NJSDL rules for registration, source integrity, ethics, and timing are in effect. If you have questions, please consult the official NSDA and/or NJSDL rules.

Awards will be given to the top 6 competitors in all categories. Sweepstakes trophies will be awarded to the top 5 teams competing.

Lincoln Douglas & Public Forum Debate

There will be four single-flighted preliminary rounds with breaks to finals only if time permits. Please register your students for the appropriate division based on NJSDL rules. We will be using the NSDA Nov/Dec topics.

Parliamentary Debate

This two-person event will run as closely as possible to the LD & PF schedules. Impromptu topics will be given 15 minutes before each round begins in the Parliamentary Debate prep room. Public Forum judges should be prepared to judge this event.

World Schools Debate

This three-person event is newer this year! It will run as closely as possible to the LD & PF schedules. Impromptu topics will be given out 30 minutes before each round begins and each round will be impromptu. For more information, please visit the NSDA website located here.

Speech

There will be three preliminary rounds in all individual event (IE) categories with breaks to finals; in categories with sufficient numbers, we may break to semifinals and/or novice honors rounds, time permitting.

Congressional Debate

There will be two sessions and a final round of Congressional Debate, with the possibility of a novice division depending on the number of entries. While there will be a judges category for Congress judges specifically, speech judges should be prepared to judge this event, as they will be the primary pool of judges.

REGISTRATION

All registration must be completed via speechwire.com. If you have never used this site before or would like assistance, please let us know and we can assist. Speechwire will accept up to four (4) entries per school per category. We reserve the right to place any further entries on a waitlist, subject to room and judge availability. Coaches will receive notifications if and when we are able to clear the waitlist.

Only students who are sponsored by a degree-granting institution are permitted to compete. No individual or “lone wolf” entries are permitted. We do allow double-entries across all the IE events only. Mavericks in Public Forum are not permitted. There are no double-entries permitted in any debate event, or across speech and debate events.

Please mark all speech novices as such in your registration. If there are enough novices in each category, we may be able to hold novice honors rounds concurrent with the final rounds, judged by volunteers and/or experienced Randolph team members. At minimum, we will give an award to the top non-advancing novice in each category that does not proceed to a novice honors round.

On-site school registration will begin at 8:00 a.m. and the first round will begin promptly at 9:15 a.m. A complete tournament schedule will be available on speechwire.com and printed on the day of. Please refer to the following page for details. 

DEADLINES

We need somewhat stable students counts so that we can best prepare our venues for your arrival. To that end, we will begin assessing nuisance fees for any registration changes other than name changes after 8:00pm on November 20. We will lock registration at 4pm on the day before the tournament. Any changes after that point must be communicated directly to the tournament staff via email or at on-site registration the next day.

All Congress bills must be emailed to Katie Burke (kburke@rtnj.org)  by 10:00am on Monday, November 11. Please make certain that you are following the NJSDL guidelines for legislation, including proofreading, educational value, and suitability for the event. All legislation must be sent by coaches; direct submissions from students will be returned.

JUDGES

Judging quotas are based on the following:

• Lincoln Douglas, Public Forum, and Parliamentary Debate
  • Teams must provide one (1) judge for every three (2) entries or fraction thereof.
  • Student debaters with at least two full years of experience may be used as judges for Novice LD or Novice PF ONLY, so long as they are marked as such in registration notes. For example, if a team has one NPF entry and two VPF entries, a student judge WILL ONLY cover the novice entry.
  • High School students may judge Middle School divisions.
• IE categories and Congress
  • Teams must provide one (1) judge for every five (5) entries or fraction thereof.
  • Student judges are not permitted, except in Middle School Divisions.
• World Schools Debate
  • Teams must provide one (1) judge for every two (2) entries or fraction thereof.

When registering your judges, if you have a judge who is able to judge your own team without conflict, please mark him or her as “clean” on the drop-down menu. Judges like these are very valuable to the tournament. If a “dirty” judge is marked clean, a judge fee may be assessed to your team.

We may be forced to assign judges based on need, regardless of category. This is something we will try never to do, but if circumstances demand it, it would be helpful for coaches to let us know of any judges who would feel more comfortable doing this. That said, speech judges can and will be used to judge Congress rounds. PF judges can and will be used to judge Parliamentary Debate. Please prepare your judges for this possibility.

We will, as usual, conduct a brief overview session for judges at approximately 8:30am. While we strive to alleviate confusion and answer all questions, we cannot spend the time to fully train judges. If you have untrained judges, please consider attending one of the free NJSDL judge training sessions (njsdl.org), or the NSDA online course.

E-BALLOTS

All coaches must have a team roster with accurate email addresses uploaded onto Speechwire. Likewise, coaches must ensure that judges are trained to complete electronic ballots and have a linked Speechwire account. Coaches should also ensure that their judges bring the appropriate chargers for their devices. Extra chargers or devices will not be available at Randolph High School.   

FEES

Please note that our fees have increased this year. This is due to the extreme costs of renting the building space to offer this tournament. I understand that this may be a barrier for some teams and I do apologize from the bottom of my heart. Unfortunately, it could not be avoided and is out of my control. Please contact me directly at kburke@rtnj.org if there are issues with the new costs of attending our tournament.  

Our fee structure is below. All payments should be made out to the Randolph Forensics Boosters Club. We accept payments before, at, or immediately after registration; or, in case of a purchase order, after the tournament. Please send payments to:

Randolph Forensics Boosters Club

attn. Katherine Burke

511 Millbrook Avenue, Randolph, NJ 07869

• Registration Fees
  • School registration fee
    • $50 per school
  • Lincoln Douglas
    • $20 per entry
  • Public Forum and Parliamentary Debate
    • $25 per entry
  • World Schools Debate
    • $25 per entry
  • IE categories and Congress
    • $15 per entry except Duo Interpretation ($20 per entry)
• Administrative Fees. These fees are designed to discourage schools and teams from doing things that make our job of running the tournament extremely difficult. We would prefer not to charge these fees – we would much rather have a smooth-running tournament!
  • Late entry fee
    • $10 per entry after 8:00pm on 11/20
  • Drop fee
    • $10 per dropped entry after 8:00pm on 11/20
  • Entire school late withdrawal fee (please don't do this!)
    • 50% of full invoice if within 24 hours of tournament; 100% for no-show
  • Judge fees
    • $150 per missing judge, per requirements below
    • $150 per dropped & non-replaced judge beginning 24 hours before registration
    • $25 per missed judge call at the discretion of tournament staff.

***

We look forward to seeing you in November! Please contact Katie Burke (kburke@rtnj.og) with any questions. Until then, we wish you the very best start to the 2024 – 2025 season.

Important tournament rooms

Lactation and Nursing Room - RHS 216
Food Storage - RHS 241
Tab Room - RHS 245
Belonging and Inclusion Station - RHS 269/LAB A
Prayer Room - RHS 307

Manager contact information

Katie Burke
Email address: kburke@rtnj.org
Phone number: 6099544493

Mailing address

511 Millbrook Ave
Randolph, NJ 07869