Regional Information Letter-#1

Dear Directors of the Southwest Region:

As competition season winds down, organization for our 3A/4A Southwest Regional Speech Tournament has begun.  I am writing to give you the information I have now that will help us make the planning and running of the tournament smooth, we hope, for everyone.

Registration is scheduled to open on Tuesday, February 16.  You will need to register on both the OSSAASpeech website and www.tabroom.com.  Registration is due Tuesday, March 2. 

You will register your judges on Tabroom.com rather than the OSSAA website, and the requirements for judges are as follows:  one speech judge for each 5 entries or portion thereof, 1 policy/CX debate judge for each entry, 1 LD/PF judge for each 2 entries of portion thereof.  

You may count judges as both speech and debate.  Please be sure to register yourselves.  Do not assume we will register you as a judge.  (Also, a judge must be available for at least six rounds to count as a full judge, but you can combine judges who are only available part of the time. Coaches are expected to be available as often as possible, but especially on Friday and Saturday of the tournament.)   Be sure to register and confirm judges as soon as you can. We hope to have only extemp and debate on Saturday; however, if we don’t have the judges to cover two rounds of prelims and one round of finals for all events on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we will have to have some final rounds on Saturday, which will delay the awards assembly.

I plan to have round I of extemp Friday evening, round II on Saturday morning, and the finals later that morning.  I will contact schools with debate entries to set up that schedule.

Please note the deadline for video links:  Monday, March 22 at 5:00 P.M..  It is the coach’s responsibility to make sure that all links open for the judges.  Be sure that your videos allow anyone with the link to view them.  (You might have other people check your videos and/or try opening them on different devices to be on the safe side.)  Entries with videos that do not open for the judges will be dropped and a drop fee assessed.

We will have a virtual awards assembly; however, I have been given permission by Mike Plunkett of the OSSAA and my administration to host a few representatives (perhaps your seniors) from each school that would like to attend the streaming and accept awards on their school’s behalf.  Masks will be required as will social distancing.  If you decide to attend, we ask that you or a certified teacher or administrator from your school accompany the students.  Please do not send students by themselves or with parents.  (Let me know if you are interested and how many individuals you would like to bring.)

I will certainly have more information at a later time, but I want to keep you informed on what we have planned and know so far.  

Lyndal Westmoreland

Okarche High School

westmorelandl@okarcheschools.org