Dear Middle School Speech and Debate Coach:

We would like to invite you to Olle Middle School’s thirteenth annual speech, drama, and debate tournament. Olle Middle School is located in southwest Houston at 9200 Boone Road, Houston, Texas 77099.

Preliminary debate rounds will occur on Friday, February 21, with debate elimination rounds occurring on Saturday, February 22. All other events will occur on Saturday only! If your school is not debating, you do not have to attend the tournament on Friday, February 22.

Our tournament schedule and entry fees will be posted by October 1, 2024.

Eligibility

This tournament is open to accredited public and private schools (schools that students attend for compulsory attendance purposes).

We will also accept the following club-based entries who have participated in at least three of our last three tournaments (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024):

Hua Xia Chinese School—Katy

Katy Speech and Debate Academy

Sugar Land SpiderSmart

Vallabh Vidya Mandir

These are the only club-based entries we will accept.

If a student competes for one of these club-based entries, and their accredited school is attending our tournament, that student must compete for their accredited school. Students who violate this rule will be disqualified.

Deadlines

Registration will open at 8:00 am on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. Once we reach capacity, new schools will not be able to register. Traditionally, our tournament fills quickly, so we encourage you to register as soon as possible.

Because our campus is small, we must limit the size of our tournament. To give schools an equal opportunity to enter their students, we will implement the following procedures:

• When registration opens on Wednesday, January 8, each school will be initially limited to...

• 10 entries per event in individual events and Congressional Debate.

• 5 entries per event in Lincoln-Douglas and public forum debate.

• 4 entries in world schools debate.

• On Monday, January 20, we will take entries off of the waiting list as space allows.

New entries will not be accepted after 4:00 pm on Friday, February 14.

The drop deadline is 4:00 pm on Tuesday, February 18. Drops after this deadline will forfeit the original entry fee. You can make name substitutions during registration.

Judging

Since our tournament is limited in size, we focus on providing the best judging possible. We believe that quality, constructive judging is crucial to the development of middle school performers. Consequently, our judging pool consists of trained adults from our faculty, our alumni, and our community, as well as carefully selected high school students who have successfully competed in high school speech and debate.

This year, we are asking each school to provide at least one qualified judge.

Additional Information

A plethora of important tournament information may be found to your right. For example, event rules may be found by clicking the Events & Divisions tab and clicking on each event.

Questions

If you have any questions, you may contact George Tennison at (281) 983-8455 or gttennis@ga.aliefisd.net. We look forward to seeing you in February.

Sincerely,

Mr. George Tennison—Director of Speech and Debate