[GFCA] Marist Scrimmage Series

[Jeffrey Miller]

Almost fifteen years ago, Fayette County Schools used to offer a "Tuesday
Night Debate Series" and it was highly successful and fostered a great
relationship and foundation for the (at the time) five active speech &
debate programs.   Without coincidence, when the Tuesday Night Debate
Series disappeared, so did 3 of the speech and debate programs.

When we created the "Areas" for the GFCA the goal was that we could copy
this system and create weeknight debate series within areas to facilitate
speech & debate at closer locations for everyone.  These weeknight
scrimmages aren't meant to count for anything GFCA related, but merely to
give first year students more practice and students (who may be busy on
Saturdays) an opportunity to try debate.  In fact, Fort Lauderdale schools
(with the help of NSDA) have weeknight debate scrimmages and last month had
1,000 Public Forum teams entered on one weeknight.

Well last month, Marist hosted a scrimmage to try and get the idea off the
ground.  We had four schools, offered public forum and policy debate, and
had a great couple of hours for new debaters.   Now that we know it will
work, we wanted to invite anyone who can make it to Marist on an afternoon
- and also encourage other parts of the state to try it out.

We are offering one next Thursday afternoon, *December 10*, for all who are
interested.  We currently have 5-6 schools planning on attending. We are
offering four divisions -- 2 divisions of Novice Policy (with the packet
and without the packet), Novice Lincoln Douglas* and Novice Public Forum*.
I would be open to adding any individual events if there was enough
interest.

The only thing we ask is that you bring enough judges to cover your
entries. Since it is a scrimmage, some judges may judge their own schools.

*(*Since there are no in state tournaments in December, the Novice LD and
PF divisions will be debating the January/February resolutions.)*

The registration and information can be found here --
https://www.tabroom.com/index/tourn/index.mhtml?tourn_id=4654

The only fees are $2 per student to cover their dinner cost.

Again, we think there are 3 or 4 areas of this state that are ready for
something like this right now and if you want help trying to start your
own, let me know - we'd be glad to help.

Thanks!

Jeff & Abby
Marist Speech & Debate
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