Georgia Northern Mountain District Qualifier

for the 2024 National Tournament

Hello! Is your school a paid member of the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) and located in the GA Northern Mountain District? Do you have students with paid memberships in the NSDA who have earned enough points to merit? If you have answered yes to these questions, your team is welcome to attend our District tournament!

This year's tournament will be held at Calhoun High School in Calhoun, GA, on the evening of Friday, March 1st, and Saturday, March 2nd. The tentative schedule is posted to the right of this message. Both speech and debate (including Big Questions Debate) rounds start Friday night, but please note, interpretation events (DI, HI, DUO, and POI) will be judged via asynchronous video links on Friday, March 1st, with a potential final round judged also asynchronously the morning of Saturday, March 2nd.

Also note, we will have two sessions of Congressional Debate on Saturday to determine qualifiers in that event. Congress will use NSDA February legislation.

Important - Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas will both use the February NSDA debate topic!

When you begin to register for the tournament, please remember, students may not double enter in a debate and a speech event. The tournament schedule does not allow for this. That being said, this does NOT include congress. Students may double enter in debate/congress or speech/congress. In fact, it is highly encouraged students do this, or they will have a lot of down time between their last speech or debate round and the time for the awards ceremony. Additionally, given the asynchronous nature of the drama (DI, HI, DUO, POI) events this year, students may double enter in those events.

Each entry is $20. Schools are required to provide one judge per two debate entries, and one judge per five speech entries. If schools fail to register the appropriate amount of judges, a fee of $200 for a speech/debate judge or $100 for an asynchronous interp judge will be assessed on the school's invoice.

Congressional Debate fees are only $5 for each entry, and there is no judge obligation; we hope this encourages you to sign up for this fun competitive event!

Lastly, please take the time to nominate someone from our district for one of the following awards: Coach of the Year (given in honor of NSDA hall of fame member and former coach of Pope HS, Betty Whitlock), Student of Year, Administrator of the Year, New Coach of the Year, Assistant Coach of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, Alum of the Year, and Communicator of the Year. The first five of those have forms online you can fill out at this link:https://www.speechanddebate.org/district-leader-forms-manuals/ If you have a nomination for one of the last three awards mentioned - Volunteer, Alum, Communicator - send those directly to the chair at jamie.wills@cherokeek12.net.

Please consider adding this event to your tournament calendar even if your team does not want to travel to the national tournament this summer. It's a great final in-person tournament to end your season and support our NSDA district.

Let us know if we can answer any questions or concerns you may have. Your district committee is here to serve you and help grow your program!

Jamie Wills - District Chair - Cherokee HS

Steven Wang - Buford HS

Mario Herrera - Midtown HS

Matt Bartula - Sequoyah HS

Colton Major - Cherokee HS