Dear Coaches and Competitors,
The Newcastle High School Forensics Team hopes that you are enjoying the start of the Speech and Debate Season. It is getting close to that time of year again, time for the annual Newcastle Speech Invitational, and we would like to cordially invite you. This year we will be holding our tournament on the 16th and 17th of January. Registration is at the Joy of Tournaments web site (www.joyoftournaments.com .) There is additional tournament information at the website as well.
This year we are having a late start to the tournament to allow teams to travel from a variety of distances. We are expecting some schools who have not participated in our tournament before this year, which should make for expanded and dynamic competition. We will also be providing a free dinner on Friday night, so teams and coaches won’t have to worry about trying to find food while keeping up with the students.
The tournament will consist of four rounds of the HOPE pattern, four rounds of the D pattern, a semi’s and a finals round. The HOPE pattern will consist of Humor, Poetry, Oratory, Extemp, Congress and Novice CX. The D pattern will consist of LD, Varsity CX, Congress, Duet, Drama and Public Forum debate. Novice CX is the only Novice division we will be having, meaning all other events are Varsity. We will award trophies for the top three places in each event, certificates for the next three places, and Sweepstakes for three different school categories.
Please help us make student congress better, bring legislation that is meaningful, and only enter in one pattern of student congress. We will not allow doubling in the pattern. We encourage students to double across the patterns.
It will be a great help if preliminary entries could be entered by January 6th. The website registration will close Friday, January 16th at Noon local time. Only drops will be allowed after that time and must be done with Coach Whitney personally by phone. (307-746-5128)
Please take note that some of our judges may be lay judges. We appreciate the fact that our judges take time out of their schedules to volunteer and do our team a favor every year. We hope that you will keep this in mind and remember that without them our meet would not be possible. We would also like you to keep in mind that we sometimes manage to have a shortage in judges, so any extra help in the judging area is welcome. We will be using varsity debaters for the Novice CX Debate judges.
Entries this year will be done online at the Joy of Tournaments web site (www.joyoftournaments.com)
Individual events, including LD, Public Forum and Student Congress will cost $6.00 per entry. All CX’s will cost $12.00 per entry. The NHS Forensics Team will be providing a free dinner on Friday Night. Local vendors may be providing discounts as well and we will make you aware of those as they become available.
We have been doing lots of planning and come up with some unique ideas for our tournament. We hope to see everyone there and wish all competitors the best of luck.
Contact Info Student Directors
Andrea Peterson Brittney Thaler
Jay Whitney Elizabeth Cleverdon
Trevor Stith
Newcastle High School Kayleigh Gould
116 Casper Ave.
email jjw@rtconnect.net
Phone (307) 746-2713
FAX (307) 746-2550
CELL (307) 746-5128
