Altoona High School

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

General information

This is a High School tournament in Wisconsin.

View manager contact information

Dear Coach, 

We are thrilled to invite you and your students to our returning Forensics Tournament at Altoona High School on Saturday, February 22, 2025. This tournament is both WFCA and WISDAA friendly, and students may double or triple enter. 

The tournament will have 3 rounds plus a final round. There will be awards for all finalists and sweepstakes awards for the top teams.

We will have concessions for sale, so please remind your students to bring cash to purchase a lunch. They may also bring a lunch from home if they prefer. There will be food available in the judge’s lounge for coaches and judges.

ENTRY FEES: The entry fee will be $10 per individual entry and $14 per group. Please bring one judge for every 5 entries with a maximum of 5 affiliated (non-clean) judges per school.  Hired judges will be available for $20 per uncovered entry.

Registration will be through https://speechwire.com

The deadline for team registration will be at 5 pm Saturday, February 15. We ask that all entries are due by 5pm Wednesday, February 19. Drops after this time will incur a drop fee of $10/dropped entry.  Checks are payable to: School District of Altoona (Memo: AHS Forensics)

We’re so excited to be hosting this tournament again and can’t wait for you to come crush some Forensics with us! Feel free to contact us if you have questions.

Emily Sibilski 

esibilski@altoona.k12.wi.us

Kiah Druckrey-Sexton

kdruckreysexton@altoona.k12.wi.us 

Special notes for 2024

Radio Announcing: Competitors may bring their own devices for Radio preparation, and they may use the devices in the performance room for reading the script. Paper copies of the source packet will also be available.

Extemporaneous Speaking and Radio Announcing Internet use: Competitors in Extemporaneous Speaking and Radio Announcing may utilize the internet during their preparation for research but not for communicating with people or accessing pre-written speeches or outlines.

Online ballots: All judges will be required to bring a Wi-Fi enabled portable device for receiving the judging schedule, writing critiques, and submitting ranks.

Registration limitations:

• Unlimited number of entries are allowed in each category.

• Double or triple entries are allowed (students may compete in multiple events).

• Please use SpeechWire’s tools to designate which of your judges are clean (have no school or team affiliation other than you hiring them to judge) versus dirty (coaches or others close to your team). This will give us more options for scheduling judges. Each school may bring a MAXIMUM of 5* dirty judges; schools with more than 25 entries will be required to fulfill their judging quota by bringing clean judges or hiring clean judges from us.  If you have extra clean judges, you may contact us and we may hire them.
  *Depending on tournament size we might allow more than 5 dirty judges.

Remember:

• The deadline for team registration is 5 pm Saturday, February 17 and entries is 5pm Wednesday, February 21.

• Drops after this time will not reduce your fees nor your judging requirement.

Important:

Please keep your SpeechWire entries updated as soon as you know about changes so that we can best plan for the tournament rooms and judging needs. One student drop might mean an entire section and judge slot can be eliminated.

Tournament day drops MUST be called in on Saturday morning before your team departs for Altoona. If you have valuable information about which students are missing that morning, we need to know prior to your arrival so that the schedules can be adjusted to balance round sizes and make the tournament run smoothly. REPORT ANY KNOWN CHANGES to 262-617-7411.

Finally, if your team has specific restrictions or needs, please let us know and we can work best to accommodate. We want the best tournament experience possible for all in attendance.

Tournament Schedule for February 24
The Altoona High School main parking lot is on the east side of the building between the school building and the football field. Enter the building from the parking lot through doors H11. If you’d like to drop students off at the front of the building, buses can unload on 7th Street and students can enter through the front doors labeled H1.

Tournament Guidelines / Category Rules

We welcome WFCA and WISDAA schools, and students may perform for the category rules for which they have prepared. To facilitate the slight differences in rules we have a basic overall philosophy: rules from either organization will be honored. If an element of a performance is allowed in either WFCA or WISDAA, it will be allowed at this tournament.

Demonstration Speaking / Expository Speaking / Informative Speaking

WFCA and WISDAA have recently made changes regarding these categories, and the rules are similar. These are the guidelines for our tournament:

• Demonstration Speaking is no longer a category, but speeches of that style may be performed in the revised Informative Speaking.

• Expository Speaking has been added as a category, with a 5 minute time limit and no visual aids permitted. Notes are permitted and unrestricted.

• Informative Speaking has been changed from 6 minutes to 10 minutes, visual aids may be used or worn, and the Criteria for Evaluation subpoints were rewritten. Notes are permitted and unrestricted. Optionally, an entry may have two presenters. This will count as a single entry (not a group category) for registration fees.

Some other examples of blending the rules include:

1. Group Interpretive Reading and Play Acting will have 12 minute time limits.

2. One 4x6 note card will be permitted in Oratory. For other categories that allow notes, they will have no specific limits, formats, or dimensions.

3. There will be no separate Public Address event, but students in Public Address can be entered in Oratory, and the judges will be alerted to this.

4. Chairs, etc. MAY be used in Solo and Group Interp. Optional speaker’s / reader’s stand may be used in the categories involving scripts or notes.

*For the WFCA rules, go to https://wfcaforensics.org
*For the WISDAA rules, go to https://wisdaa.org

Manager contact information

Emily Sibilski
Email address: esibilski@altoona.k12.wi.us
Phone number: 262-617-7411

Mailing address

711 7th Street W
Altoona, WI 54720