Bill Teter’s Penultimate Call for Speech & Debate Judges

Contact Bill at bill_teter@universitylaboratoryschool.org

Aloha all,

Thank you to all of you who have been able to help out the Laboratory School Speech and Debate Team this year by serving as a judge. You have been crucial in allowing our team to continue to compete even in this COVID-19 world of online competition.

We’re heading into the final stretch, so I’m putting out another call for the few remaining competitions. For any of you who might be interested and available:

If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to sign up and create an account on the tabroom.com website. You’ll be asked for a phone number and an email address, and these will be used to send you your judging assignments. Once you have created your account, there should be a prompt on the right side of your screen where you can request to be linked to University Laboratory School. I will receive an email notice, accept the request, and you should be ready to go.

HSL #09 SPEECH QUALIFYING TOURNAMENT

(5 judges needed)

This tournament will be conducted with pre-recorded videos for all events. This means that once your judging assignments are announced late Thursday evening (March 4), you can judge your rounds whenever you want between then and Saturday, March 6, at noon. Just be sure to press the “Start Round” button and submit your ballots by the listed times (there are late fines for schools whose judges miss those deadlines).

Thursday, March 4, 2021

9:00 p.m.   Judges ballots/schedule released

Friday, March 5, 2021

8:00 a.m.  Reminder to speech judges to press “Start Round”

12:00 noon Deadline to press “Start Round” for asynchronous speech rounds

3:00 pm    Non-started ballots reassigned to standby judges

9:00 p.m.   Deadline for reassigned judges to press “Start Round”

Saturday, March 6, 2021

12:00 noon Deadline to complete preliminary speech judging

12:00 noon Coaches check in to Judge’s Lounge as emergency standby judges to finish 

preliminary rounds.

2:45 p.m. Speech judges check into the Judge’s Lounge for finals assignment

3:00 p.m. FINALS – Judges ballots/schedule released.

Judges have 15 minutes to press “Start Round” before being replaced

Judges have 90 minutes to submit their completed ballots

HSL #10 NATIONAL QUALIFYING STUDENT CONGRESS

(2 judges needed; 1 for each session)

This competition qualifies students for the National Tournament in June.

I don’t yet have a schedule for this tournament, but I can tell you this much:

•  This is a synchronous tournament; it will be conducted live online.

• The bills and resolutions to be debated are written by the students themselves.

•  It will consist of two sessions, each one running 2.5 to 3 hours. There is usually a motion for a short recess after a particular bill has been voted on. A judge can only serve for one session.

•  Students pretty much run the whole show. They elect a student as presiding officer (PO), then they vote on the order in which bills and resolutions will be debated. The PO calls on students to speak and pretty much runs the session.

•  Judges award points for speeches, but the students do not compete against each other. Each student’s speech is judged and scored on its own.

When I’ve asked judges how it went, most of them have said it’s a fairly easy gig, and pretty interesting. If you think you’d like to give it a try, I’d be grateful.

STATE FORENSIC CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT

Saturday, April 17, 2021

I don’t have the schedule yet. I assume it will be similar to the previous speech tournaments. I won’t know for another week or so how many judges I’ll need for States; I’m estimating 5.

Contact Bill at bill_teter@universitylaboratoryschool.org