The 2022 Clover Hill Groundhog Day Classic

WHEN:  Saturday, February 5, 2022 (rescheduled)

WHERE:  Clover Hill High School, 13301 Kelly Green Lane, Midlothian, VA 23112

This in person Speech and Debate tournament will follow VHSL rules to prepare students for upcoming regional and state tournaments, although private schools are encouraged to compete as well.  

Tabroom Reminders

Web-Based Registration:

All registration must be done through this tournament website.   

No fax, email or phone entries will be accepted at any time. All competitors and judges must have tabroom accounts linked to their schools.

If you do not have a tabroom account go to www.tabroom.com, click on the SIGN-UP link in the upper-right of the webpage. This takes you to the CREATE YOUR TABROOM ACCOUNT page. Complete the form. See http://docs.tabroom.com/Sign_Up for detailed instructions.

Coaches who are new to tabroom: when you have finished setting up your team account, add your debaters and judges to it.  Then, enter your debaters for the tournament at http://cloverhilltournament.tabroom.com/ or just find Clover Hill Tournament on the tabroom homepage under 2/5/22. 

Tabroom Pairings and Balloting: 

Our tournament will be physically hosted on campus, we will be utilizing Tabroom for online ballots to help save time and resources. This requires both judges AND competitors to sign up for a Tabroom account. Coaches, you will have to make sure that the account is linked to your school so you can also have easy access to ballots and other logistical information moving forward. 

COVID Policies

The following protocols will be in place to ensure the safety of all during the tournament:  

Competition:

• All participants, judges and coaches will be masked during the tournament 
• Each room of competition will have participants 6 feet apart, and the tabroom software keeps a record of all competitors by round.  
• No observers (parents or otherwise) will be permitted in any rooms.  

Before Competition/in between rounds/lunch:

Each school will be assigned between 1 and 2 classrooms for their students to be when not in competition (unless the competition is very small and we could assign tables spread out in the commons)

Each coach is responsible for making sure their competitors stay distanced and in their team room/area when not in competition.  

Lunch is being provided to all participants, and will consist of individually wrapped sandwiches, chips and soda/water.  We will lay out the food on a table in the commons, and each student will take their lunch to their team classroom to eat, spaced out.  

Competition Events Guidelines

1.  The following speech categories will be offered (3 rounds each): 

Extemp*, Impromptu, Original Oratory, Prose, Poetry, DI, HI, Serious Duo**, Humorous Duo*, Storytelling, Duo Improv, and Original Spoken Word Poetry***.  Students MAY double-enter in speech categories.

*Students entered in Extemp may NOT double enter for our tournament.

**Serious & Humorous Duo may be combined based on the number of entries.

***OSW Poetry - in this category the student presents a poem or collection of poems that the student has written himself.  The use of a manuscript is OPTIONAL in this category, but all competitors should bring 3 hard copies of their poem(s) so that they can submit a copy to the judges at the end of each round as is done in OO.

2.  Lincoln-Douglas:  Novice* & Open divisions 4 rounds (1-3 are randomly assigned and #4 is power-paired) The Lincoln-Douglas topic will be the NSDA topic for January-February: Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.

3.  Public Forum:  Novice* and Open.  4 rounds (1-3 are randomly assigned and #4 is power-paired)

The Public Forum topic will be NSDA topic for January: Resolved: The United States federal government should legalize all illicit drugs.

*Note: There will be no coin flips for our tournamentàstudents will be assigned to the pro (going first) or con side (going second) for each round.

*Note:  Novice debaters must be in their first year of competitive debate. If there are not enough numbers to operate a separate novice bracket for LD and PF, they will be combined into the open division, but top novice awards will still be given. 

4.  Student Congress:  Open division.  2 sessions of Congress, 2 hours each.

Each school must submit legislation and each student may submit one bill or resolution.  Please coordinate to divide bills up among the following 4 categories (Domestic, International, Virginia, and Economic). Schools that hope to go above eight students may put a student on the waitlist but their participation cannot be guaranteed until tournament registration has been completed.  

Email Congress legislation to hunter_clark@ccpsnet.net by January 12th, 2021 at 5:00 PM.

Please have your students use the templates for their legislation and only send your bills as Microsoft Word documents. I will send back bills that do not meet these specifications and will not include bills submitted past the deadline to ensure a prompt bill packet.

Congress Topics 

Domestic                                                         Economic

School Vouchers                                             Anti-Trust Polices

Immigration Reform                                       Family Leave

International                                                  Virginia

U.S./Iran                                                         Virginia’s Campaign Finance rules

Climate Change                                              Virginia’s Parole and Criminal Sentencing policies

JUDGES 

Each school is responsible for providing their own judges with the following quotas:

1 judge for:

…every 2 Lincoln-Douglas Debate entries or fraction thereof,

…every 2 Public Forum Debate entries or fraction thereof,

…every 5 Speech/Student Congress entries or fraction thereof. 

Unfortunately, if you show up without the required judging on Saturday morning, you will be forced to choose which competitors you drop.  Getting in person judges may be extremely difficult, but all schools need to bear their own burden.

HOW TO CAST YOUR BALLOT ONLINE   (A video tutorial on this process is here.)

Once a round has been posted, going to the Tabroom homepage for your account (click on your email address on the top right if you’re lost) will list your pending and past ballots. Once you and all debaters are present in the room click START ROUND for that round. You will see your ballot, with space for comments below and an online timer at right.

You may submit comments or an RFD under the results; clicking Save RFD under here will save your comments without submitting results; the RFD will also be saved when you submit results. You can also sent comments to specific speakers by choosing them from the menu at right; but save any RFD first before doing so. For congress, each speech will give you a chance to record points for that speech, the topic thereof, and comments specific to the speech.

Once the round is over, enter the scores needed (win/loss, ranks, points). You will be asked to confirm your ballot; please review the results and confirm. You cannot change results after confirmation so if you catch an error please contact the physical tab room in the library to correct it. Judges can edit/add feedback until the tournament is completed.  

Lunch will be provided for all through a generous grant from the Richmond Forum and Capital One. 

DEBATE SCHEDULE:

Registration:                           8:00-8:30 am

Judges meeting:                      8:45 am (in the Forum)

Round 1 (LD/PF):                   9:15 am

Round 2 (LD/PF):                   10:30 am

Round 3 (LD/PF):                   11:30 pm

Lunch                                      12:30-1:30 pm

Round 4 (LD/PF):                   1:30 pm (will be power paired based on rounds 1-3)

SPEECH SCHEDULE:

Registration:                           8:00-8:30 am

Judges meeting:                      9:00 am (in the Forum)

Round 1                                  9:30 am

Round 2                                  11:00 am

Lunch                                      12:00-1:00 pm

Round 3                                  1:00 pm

CONGRESS SCHEDULE:

Registration:                           8:00-8:30 am

Judges Report:                        9:05 am

Session 1                                 9:15-11:30

Lunch                                      11:30-12:30

Session 2                                 12:30 pm-2:30 pm

AWARDS: 

The awards assembly should begin at 3:45 pm Trophies will be awarded to the top 3 finishers in each category.  Sweepstakes and runner up sweepstakes trophies will be given to the schools with the most points in all 4 categories.

QUESTIONS?

If you have questions about Speech events, please contact Jessica Fout at Jessica_Fout@ccpsnet.net 

If you have questions about Debate/Student Congress or problems with the tabroom website, please contact Hunter Clark at hunter_clark@ccpsnet.net

Best,

Hunter Clark and Jessica Fout

Clover Hill Speech and Debate Coaches