Judging Responsibilities

PARENT JUDGES

Thank you for all the rounds you have judged and all the excellent feedback you have provided this year. The students competing at the National Invitational Tournament of Champions are depending on your keen eye, sharp minds, soft hearts and lively pens yet again. We cannot have a tournament without your significant investment in judging.

Rather than have you all sign up for specific rounds, we thought it would be better just to explain the expectations for parent judges at this tournament.

Local families are recruiting community judges. Depending on their success, your judging requirements may be lessened.

We do want you to be able to enjoy seeing your students compete at this tournament. If everyone does their part, everyone will be assured of the opportunity to watch their own children compete on the national stage.

All parents who have not been through a Stoa Judge Orientation are required to participate in one of these enjoyable sessions before judging speech and debate.

Preliminary IE Rounds

Total Rounds = 6 (Three Pattern A Rounds + Three Pattern B Rounds)

Each family is expected to judge 3 rounds if you have one IE student.
Each family is expected to judge 4 rounds if you have two or more IE students.

Preliminary Debate Rounds

Total Rounds = 6

Each family is expected to judge 2 rounds if you have one debater.
Each family is expected to judge 4 rounds if you have two or more debaters.

(So for Team Policy Team A, the family of Student #1 will judge two rounds and the family of Student #2 will also judge two rounds. If the students on Team Policy Team A are siblings then the family will judge four rounds. If you have two or more Team Policy debaters, it is expected that your family will judge four preliminary rounds of debate.)

Outrounds

Speech
We are asking EVERY parent whose child does not break to judge speech outrounds. (If your student is eliminated in outrounds, please judge the following outround.) If there are remaining ballots, then some of the parents whose students do break will also have to judge.

Debate
We are asking EVERY parent whose child does not break to judge debate outrounds. (If your student is eliminated in outrounds, please judge the following outround.) We need a large number of debate judges in the first couple of outrounds, so we will likely need parents of students who do break to judge also. Parents will be expected to judge multiple outrounds. The Double Elimination format significantly increases the number of rounds that are necessary.