Coaches and Students,

You are cordially invited to attend The Brawl at the Mall, a Speech and Debate Tournament hosted at LAMP High School on Friday and Saturday, 06 & 07 December.

The schedule is set to offer two full rounds of Congress on Friday, starting at 3:30 pm and finishing that evening. We will use a yet-to-be-determined legislation packet from the NSDA most likely, which will get uploaded to this tournament's website as soon as it is determined.

Speech is Saturday only, starting at 8:30 am and finishing that early evening after three rounds and then finals (although all events will get a 4th round). Speech events will include Duo Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Programmed Oral Interpretation, Prose Interpretation, Poetry Interpretation, Original Oratory, Informative Speaking, Impromptu, and Extemporaneous Speaking. Students may double enter any two speech events. (Events may be combined if certain ones do not have sufficient numbers.)

In an exciting development, we will be offering Big Questions and Lincoln Douglas Debate for the first time. Debate will also be Saturday only, starting at 8 am. There will be both a school cap and total entry cap for both BQ and LD. All schools are permitted to have 3 BQ and 3 LD debate entries. If you have more, they can go on the waitlist. On November 22 (two weeks before the tournament), if we have the room, I will start accepting entries off the waitlist. You can still continue to register up until the final date of registration, but spots will probably be very limited after November 22, so register early! Based on logistics, the plan right now is to offer 4 double-flighted debate rounds with no elims, but we will let you know ASAP if we can move to a single-flighted tournament with finals and/or semis.

We do not have a reliable judge hire pool for this tournament, so every effort should be made to provide your full allotment. We do not wish to prevent anyone from attending based solely upon judges, but it is a real and influential consideration for this tournament.

Per the new UK TOC guidelines, we will be able to offer TOC bids in the Individual Events. Please see the new TOC bid information for Speech so you can see what sort of bids will be available; it is based on the number of schools that attend and the number of students per event.

We hope this tournament gives students a chance to grow in Congressional Debate (something rarely offered in our district until the "postseason") as well as the different Speech Events. We also think the format is advantageous for schools that only wish to attend one day. There will be no need to arrange overnight lodging if your school opts for one day over the other. Of course, we encourage all schools to attend both days.

Finally, we are excited to offer several holiday themed events that will take place over the course of the weekend. To that end, we are encouraging everyone to wear an "ugly" sweater to participate in if they wish. There will be no detriment to students if they opt in or out of this non-traditional attire.

We look forward to your considering joining us on that weekend!

Jordan Berry & Luke Craig