Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you and your team to the 50th Anniversary of the Winston Churchill Classic hosted in-person on January 10-12, 2025. We are excited to host another excellent tournament and whether you are a tournament regular, this is your first time attending, or you are returning to the tournament to celebrate the milestone of 50 years we hope you have a great experience.

We are proud to have been awarded TOC bids from the University of Kentucky in LD (semifinals), Gold PF (finals), Silver PF (semifinals), Congress (top 6) and all relevant Speech events. We are also pleased to announce that we are also a NIETOC qualifying tournament in the relevant speech events as well as a TFA qualifying tournament.

In debate events we will feature 6 preliminary debate rounds for VLD and VPF, and 5 preliminary rounds for VCX and WSD. All Novice events will have 4 rounds and clear to an appropriate number of elimination debates. If numbers are large enough, we will expand VCX to 6 preliminary rounds as well. Congressional debate will feature one prelim with semifinal and final rounds to follow. Speech events will feature THREE(!) preliminary rounds, and quarters, semis, and finals based on entry numbers. Debates will begin Friday afternoon with semifinal and final debates on Sunday for VLD and VPF. 

While we anticipate a large field in all events, we still are determined to provide a quality tournament experience for all competitors and to maintain a fair break in all speech and debate events while also keeping the schedule as humane as possible. In order to accomplish this and ensure we have enough classroom space to host the tournament, it is necessary for us to implement event caps in our events.

For all Varsity Debate events, we will place an initial entry cap at 76 entries please get your entries in early as we very likely will hit this cap in LD and PF debate. We will give priority for waitlisted spots to schools from Central/South Texas. If the initial cap is reached, we will admit entries off of the waitlist until December 13, after that date, all waitlist restrictions will be lifted. We will advance all winning records up to a full doubles round.

In all Speech events, we will have an initial entry cap of 76 entries and an overall event cap of 96 entries. Waitlist priority will be given to schools from Central/South Texas until December 13 at which point all waitlist restrictions will be lifted until our overall cap is reached.

In Congress we will have an initial cap of 120 entries.

We look forward to hosting you in January. The full invitation and tournament information can be found on the right, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

Preston Stolte, Daniel Moore, Ian Dill, and Kandi King