persuasive speech nsda

‘I’m Going to Say It From the Heart.’ America’s Reckoning on Race Has Come to High School Speech and Debate

O n the night of June 7, the second Sunday after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis , Bintou Baysmore stood among hundreds of demonstrators on the plaza outside the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, N.Y. The 17-year-old hadn’t planned to speak at the rally. But when one of the organizers offered the microphone, she took it.

In the middle of a weekday about a year earlier, she told the crowd, she’d been walking with a friend in Crown Heights, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Brooklyn, when a police van pulled to the curb and a white female officer ordered the girls to get in. They explained that they were out for lunch, which was permitted by their school, but the officer insisted. The police took the girls back to school, but Baysmore was shaken by the incident. Speaking to TIME, Baysmore recalls, “I kept thinking, ‘What if this is it for me?’”

It was an impromptu speech, but Baysmore was far from a novice speaker. She’s president of the speech and debate team at Achievement First Brooklyn High School and specializes in an event called Original Oratory, in which students write and deliver their own speeches. To the Barclays Center crowd, Baysmore’s story was familiar , its messenger a reflection of themselves, but—until recently, at least—hers wasn’t the kind of address often heard in competition.

Now, however, Baysmore and her teammates are in the vanguard of a change within the activity. It’s a change in the faces appearing on the stage, as well as in the view of which topics should be discussed and on whose terms. Once-predictable high school oratory is starting to reflect a wider shift in how Americans talk about race, gender and the distribution of power in the United States—even if not everyone wants to hear what these young speakers have to say.

For the team’s first tournament this school year, which will be held virtually in January by Emory University (high school debate tournaments are typically hosted by colleges), Baysmore is getting ready to try out her most daring speech yet. The teenager plans to talk about how Black women are often left out of the conversation when it comes to mental health. “I am an African American female. Look at me,” she says in one version of the speech she’s rehearsing. “When you see me up here… what do you think? Strong. Independent. Gold Digger. Poor. Crazy?”

Read more: America’s Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism

This is not the typical stuff of oratory meets, where even speeches about the most hot-button topics are studiously mild. “A lot of speeches I hear, they’re good, but they don’t seem real,” Baysmore says. “If I’m going to say something, I’m going to say it from the heart. If I’m the only Black female in that room, what I say matters.”

That could be the unifying idea for the Achievement First speech team. The Crown Heights charter high school is 90% Black, and nearly 80% of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch, which often makes its mostly female teammates outliers among winners in their speech categories. Their first-person accounts have an immediacy that’s unusual in speeches at national meets, where competitors minted at summer debate camps tend to approach their topics with analytical detachment.

“A few years ago, there were speeches winning at nationals about how we shouldn’t procrastinate, or about cats,” says K.M. DiColandrea, who was a debater at New York City’s Stuyvesant High School and coached the Achievement First Brooklyn team from 2011 to 2019. “That’s starting to change. You got kids in debate recounting cases of racism. You got kids in interpretive speech reading poetry about Black Lives Matter. You got kids in oratory writing about their undocumented parents. Our kids are not afraid to speak their truth about what’s going on.”

One way or another, the country’s reckoning with systemic racism would have reached the speech and debate world. In June, the board of directors of the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA), which has been organizing national competitions since 1931, issued a statement on the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. The board urged its community to “model and foster the importance of listening to those perspectives that are marginalized by racism.”

That’s what Achievement First students have been pushing for for years. And they’ve had some success. The speech team, which DiColandrea added to the program in 2014, had its breakthrough just four years later, in 2018, when then-team member Aliyah Mayers placed first at Columbia University’s tournament in the Declamation event—for which students interpret published speeches—with her delivery of Alicia Garza ’s “Why Black Lives Matter.” The next year, Raani Olanlege won in Original Oratory at Harvard, with a speech on racism in education. And in the spring of 2019, Sasha Bogan was a semifinalist at the NSDA Nationals with an original speech about living with cerebral palsy.

“A lot of speeches I hear, they’re good, but they don’t seem real.”

It wasn’t easy for any of them. Black Lives Matter signs are now a fixture of suburban lawns, but in 2018, Mayers was warned by teammates not to utter the words at competitions. “ Why Black Lives Matter ,” a rebuke of white supremacy and its enforcement through police violence , seemed to say everything she was feeling at the time—but sometimes, right in the middle of the speech, she wished she’d taken her teammates’ advice. “I saw the eye rolls, the people turning away, and I just wanted to stop and sit down,” she recalls. “I thought maybe I was giving the speech wrong. Maybe it was my fault.”

Olanlege explains it another way. “In many rounds, I am the only black female there, the only person of color there, period,” she says.

There is no official count of students and coaches of color in the speech and debate world, but, “What we do know is that it doesn’t feel like enough,” says J. Scott Wunn, executive director of the NSDA.

Even before its statement on racism, the NSDA had been making efforts to promote diversity. For the past six years, it has held a “coach caucus” at the national competition to encourage discussions about race and implicit bias. Strides have also been made over the past several years to increase the diversity of judges at the national competition, Wunn says, and the NSDA is working with organizations like the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues to promote debate education in urban public schools, while also introducing new formats that are more accessible to unseasoned students and coaches.

But when it comes to the words spoken in competition, much of what’s changed comes from young people themselves. Wunn says he first noticed a shift toward “heavy-hitting” speeches at the 2015 nationals in Dallas, where Kenon Brinkley from Andover High School, in Kansas, placed first in Original Oratory with a speech about racism and victim shaming. Then, in February 2018, the student protests that followed the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., brought home to the NSDA just how the political landscape was changing. Kids who weren’t old enough to vote were addressing the public and politicians directly through the media. “The lessons we’ve learned in the last few years, about the power of their voice, no matter their age—that just slapped us upside the head,” Wunn says. “Of course it’s a central requirement of the organization to foster that.”

Getting it right is an existential matter for the NSDA. After all, speech and debate are designed to teach young people how to address topics of public importance with reason and civility. But what good is public debate if it excludes a good part of the public?

The final round in Original Oratory is a major event at nationals. It’s the finale, just before the awards ceremony. Everyone who attends the finals, around 2,000 people in a typical year, turns out to hear bravura performances honed over months at regional meets.

For the past several years, Original Oratory winners have been students of color from prep schools or suburban high schools. In some ways, the speeches are as different from one another as their speakers are. One starts with a Bollywood-style song and dance; another illustrates a point with reference to rapper Cardi B. But they have tended to draw on similar themes in their arguments, focusing on how American political discourse, especially when it turns to race and identity, is degraded by oversimplification—false narratives, false equivalences, reductive thinking.

A key component of these speeches is first-hand testimony to the pain of being the target of racism. In 2017, J.J. Kapur, who is Sikh, recalled mistaking an image of a turbaned Osama Bin Laden, superimposed over the falling Twin Towers, for his father. The next year, Halima Badri summoned the hurt she felt when a classmate commenting on her hijab said, “It really brings out your inner terrorist.” In 2019, Haris Hosseini, who is Muslim, described being called “one of the good ones,” and wondered, “Were the 50 Muslims slaughtered in a New Zealand mosque three months ago good ones or bad ones?”

Read more: Echoing Decades of Fighting Over U.S. History Classrooms, President Trump Announces a Push for ‘Patriotic Education’

These speeches are technically brilliant, and they counter the bad faith of current political debate with logic and humanity. They have something else in common, too: they each offer solutions—not easy ones, but solutions that trust the audience to take up their challenges “together,” as Kapur says at the end of his. It’s easy to see why these speeches win.

The Achievement First speeches are different. Take Sasha Bogan’s semifinal round speech at the nationals. She sets out to unsettle her audience by interrogating the choice not to give up a subway seat to a disabled person. Olanlege, who is Nigerian and Sudanese, used a similar strategy in her winning speech at Harvard, directly challenging her audience over the uninformed questions she gets about Africa. These oratories draw clear lines between speaker and audience, and their solutions do not always invite easy agreement. When Mayers focuses on police violence against Black people, and when Olanlege calls out white teachers for avoiding discussions about race, each is saying to her audience, which is mostly white, “You are the problem.”

The confrontational style has its risks. To some judges, confrontation is mutually exclusive with the reasoned argumentation the event is supposed to reward.

In 2017, Esther Reyes, then a senior at Achievement First, made it to the semifinal round at Emory University’s tournament with a speech called “The Other Race,” which describes the effects of implicit bias. Reyes said in her speech that racist assumptions about Mexicans led to her father’s deportation.

Ian Turnipseed, a public-speaking coach in Gulf Breeze, Fla., was a judge in that round. He says statements like Reyes’ can come off as over-generalizations, or worse, sloganeering—assuming that the audience agrees with the speaker and failing to provide persuasive evidence. “She did not have a burden of proof that she needed to present,” Turnipseed says. “I find that to be sloppy.”

Not just sloppy, but possibly offensive, Turnipseed adds. You never know the politics of the people in the room. Many would agree that what happened to Reyes’ father is not a good thing, Turnipseed says, but to take the attitude that “anybody who disagrees with me is racist, is wrong, is stupid, is bigoted,” he says, “is not holding yourself to the standard of the topic you are creating.”

Reyes, who is now a student at Yale, says she is not surprised by these comments. “Original oratory is supposed to be on a topic the speaker cares deeply about, and I remember being one of the few who gave a very personal one. I knew there would be judges who wouldn’t like what I had to say.”

It’s kind of an unspoken rule in oratory, that you have to share your hardest memory

The speech that beat Reyes’ to advance to the final round was titled “Competitive Victimhood.” The speaker, Emma Warnecke, was a senior at Saint Mary’s Hall, a private college preparatory school in San Antonio, Texas. Taking a self-reflexive turn, she argued that high school oratory had become a race to one-up competitors with ever more harrowing personal stories.

“It’s kind of an unspoken rule in oratory, that you have to share your hardest memory, the most difficult time you have been through, whether it’s racism or sexual assault, or any other type of hardship,” Warnecke told me in the spring of 2019.

Warnecke says she has since rethought part of her position. “It is unbelievably frustrating to walk into a final round at a tournament and see five white judges staring at you as you pour your heart out about issues affecting your particular community,” she says. That speech was a long time ago, she adds. “As a 17-year-old, I could never have imagined what my fellow students were going through.”

Still, Warnecke says she stands by the idea that speeches have become too reliant on personal trauma, with potential harm to teen speakers. The view is not uncommon in speech and debate circles, where there’s worry that coaches could pressure students into exposing vulnerabilities to impress judges.

“She had a point,” Turnipseed says, recalling Warnecke’s speech. “We use other people’s pain to win.”

But for the students at Achievement First, winning isn’t the main reason to speak up. DiColandrea says that while telling these stories is difficult, the cost of silence is even higher.

“The one thing I learned is that not having a space to talk about traumatic things just makes it worse,” the coach says. After the Twin Towers fell just a couple blocks from his high school, no one seemed to want to talk about it. It was speech and debate that gave him an outlet. “Our students have stories to tell,” he says. “This isn’t about them finding their voice. This is about amplifying their voice.”

Bogan was just tired of being ignored. “People don’t take me seriously, or they don’t want to talk to me,” she said last year, of her experience with cerebral palsy. Speech allowed her to work through that frustration. “It’s like this fire in me, that I’ve been holding back for so long. I can finally say it, and they have no choice but to listen.”

As for Baysmore, she says her public protest would never have happened if not for speech and debate. “I used to be afraid of speaking up,” she says. “Now it empowers me. I’m not standing there, thinking, ‘What if they start judging me because I’m Black?’ I’m thinking, ‘They’re lucky to be in the room with me.’”

For the time being, she’s focused on getting herself and her team ready for the tournament at Emory. At a recent Zoom practice session, she offered comments on the wording of their speeches, the intonations, the gestures. She knows what it means for her teammates to speak their own words, and how it will feel to finally be heard.

“It takes away the pressure, it takes away that pain a little bit,” she says. “Everything that you’ve been hiding inside is now out in the open, and you have to face it. And once you face it, you can overcome it.”

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Why You Should Debate in the NSDA

by Joshua Hu | Jun 9, 2017 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

The National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) has gotten quite the bad rap from the homeschool community (and some of it is certainly legitimate), but it’s not as bad as many make it out to be. In fact, there are many great educational opportunities you can gain from competing in the NSDA that aren’t available in homeschool-specific leagues such as NCFCA or Stoa.

The NSDA (or formerly the NFL, for National Football Forensic League) is the oldest and largest high school speech and debate organization and honor society in the world, spanning thousands of public and private schools nationwide. Sponsoring five debate categories (Policy, LD, Public Forum, Congressional, World Schools), eight speech categories (Informative Speaking, Program Oral Interpretation, Dramatic, Duo, and Humorous Interpretations, Original Oratory, International Extemporaneous, and United States Extemporaneous), and several other non-national category events which also serve as consolation or supplemental events at Nationals (Storytelling, Impromptu, Poetry, Prose Reading, Extemporaneous Debate), the NSDA hosts the largest academic competition in the world—NSDA Nationals—with upwards of 4,000 students participating annually.

As a four-year competitor in the NSDA, I’d like to inform you about the league, highlight what I feel are its high and low points, and encourage those who’d like to compete in another league that doing so will greatly benefit their public speaking and prepare them for the “real-world.”

About the NSDA: Stylistic Differences

As in Stoa or NCFCA, there are many stylistic and argumentative differences within different regions of the league. The same is true (and in much greater proportion) in the NSDA. If you are interested in competing in the NSDA for a few tournaments, which I strongly recommend, I advise you observe a few rounds at a local tournament, to see what type of region your area is, so you can have a better idea of what events would be most fruitful for you to participate in. It may also give you a great love for the fact that you have community judges and such a strong focus on communication (even over the flow) in your own leagues.

Type 1: Traditional Circuits

Traditional regions (such as the one I competed in in Hawaii) are stylistically similar to Stoa and NCFCA. Pace is conversational, a higher emphasis is placed on persuasive speaking and the three pillars of rhetoric. Policy debates focus on the topic and may be argued from stock issue or policymaker lenses. Lincoln-Douglas debates, though with Policy-type resolutions, are debated within a values context and are generally devoid of policy arguments such as plans, counterplans, and absurd theory arguments. Judges in these regions tend to be parents, community judges, alumni, and coaches.

LD at NSDA Nationals tends to fall under this category. If you find that your local tournaments are “traditional”, I wholeheartedly encourage you to try a few tournaments in Policy or LD. It will be different (meaning you learn new skills), but the end goal is still the same, to improve your speaking to develop as a person and to winsomely persuade for truth.

Type 2: Progressive Circuits

Progressive circuits, on the other hand, are very different than what you are used to debating in Stoa or NCFCA. Resulting from debate coaches and judges who commit to as little intervention as possible in the round, such regions include spreading (jargon for speed reading) at 350+ words per minute to cram as much evidence into a single speech, performative affirmatives which play music, rap, or talk about a different subject as a better use of the “debate space”, nuclear winter and extinction impacts on both sides, jargon-heavy debates, etc. LD is “one-person policy”, with plans, theory, counterplans, topicality, kritiks, and other arguments run while spreading.

Policy at NSDA Nationals tends to fall under this category (but the final round competitors do not as asked by league officials so as to make the debate accessible to the people in the audience). As a debater who competed in a traditional district, then went to the National Tournament, I can tell you that debating in progressive circuits is not fun nor educational in developing skills you can use outside of the debate space. If you are in one of these districts, I would discourage competing in Policy or LD. (NOTE: Some traditional regions of LD may be progressive in Policy, and vice-versa. So it’s best to check out both types of debate as they may be very different.)

By now you may be thinking, “I’m in a progressive district. What good will debating in this environment do for me?”

What should I do if my state or region is heavily progressive?

Well, the Board of Directors of the NSDA realized this was a problem, so in the early 2000s, a new category was created: Public Forum (PF) Debate. In both traditional and progressive leagues for LD and Policy, Public Forum Debate is conversationally paced, focused on persuasion using three pillars of rhetoric, and usually judged by community members, parents, coaches, and alumni who seek to differentiate PF from what Policy and even LD has become in many regions. With new topics every month pulled from the headlines (see below), short 4-minute constructives, 2-minute summaries/final focuses, 3-minute two-way crossfires, and a grand crossfire between all debaters, PF is a fast-paced, unique style of debating you cannot find in a homeschool league that has great educational value and appeal to speechies and debaters alike.

“On balance, a one-day national primary would be more beneficial for the United States than its current primary process.”

“The United States should lift its embargo against Cuba.”

“On balance, economic sanctions are reducing the threat Russia poses to Western interests”

Public Forum Debate requires debaters be skilled in rhetoric, arguing specifics, as well as identifying the crux of the debate. If you argue too wide of a position in the 2-minute final focus, you risk losing all your arguments.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Well, I can get the same type of debate in traditional NSDA leagues as I can in Stoa or NCFCA, and there’s this one other debate category. Why should I bother with trying to enter this new league?”

So why should I compete in the NSDA?

There are three main reasons why I believe any homeschool debater should compete in the NSDA.

Access to More Tournaments

The more you practice at something, the better you will become. With nearly every public and private school in America participating in the NSDA, there are usually tournaments that are just a couple miles from your home! Some areas even have tournaments nearly every weekend.

Debating in Front of a Different Audience

The great majority of your fellow competitors and judges in Stoa and NCFCA are Christian and conservative. While this provides a tremendous opportunity to grow in your faith and communicate with other believers, it’s important to also convince those who hold beliefs different than your own. With competitors and judges of vastly different religions, lifestyles, and political viewpoints, debating in the NSDA is a great way to persuade a great range of individuals.

Improving Efficiency and Line-by-Line

Some judges (in the great minority) do not flow, in traditional districts. However, many judges in even traditional regions adjudicate via the flow. While both appreciate boiling down to the crux of the debate and looking at the big picture, the best debaters in the NSDA are incredibly efficient and skilled at the line-by-line. Debating the NSDA will help you to improve your line-by-line debating and word economy. A greater focus on the line-by-line will help you to better develop these skills, as well as how to balance the big picture and specifics as you move to persuade.

Public Forum Debate

You can’t get this form of debate in a homeschool league, and it gives you so many unique learning opportunities: researching quickly, writing cases every month, condensing to the crux, winning the line-by-line through efficient word economy, and short speeches. Cross-examination is different because of the back-and-forth questioning, and overall, it’s a fun new experience.

Defending Your Beliefs

Drew here. Josh said I could hijack his post and throw this little note in. 😛 I competed in a couple of NSDA tournaments last year and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. One of the reasons is that I actually had to defend my ideologies. In NCFCA and Stoa, it’s often far too easy to just rest on the fact that most of your judges have conservative beliefs and just know that they’ll vote for you as long as the words “free-market” “de-regulate” and “natural rights” are in your speeches. In Stoa, I watched a team in semis run a harm of “Socialist Sugar Policy.” In NSDA, I debate someone who advocated creating a socialist housing market. IN FINALS! These viewpoints would almost lose just by being brought up in Stoa and NCFCA. However, in NSDA, you don’t just get to win because you quote Ronald Reagan. I was forced to go to the routes of my beliefs and understood why I believed them to be true in order to win debate rounds. This was the most helpful experience in the NSDA for me, defending my beliefs.

Back to your regular programming. 🙂

At the end of the day, you may prefer debating in your homeschool league, be it NCFCA or Stoa. However, take a chance, and try out a few NSDA tournaments in PF or another category.

I’ve gained so much these past four years taking advantage of different categories and opportunities given by the NSDA. Take hold of these as well—you’ll be glad you did.

Joshua Hu is an intern at Ethos. In the fall he will enter the University of Hawaii at Mānoa as a freshman, studying Accounting and Political Science, with the intent of pursuing a law degree and working in law, business, and/or policy. He debated for four years in a traditional district of the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA), in both Policy and Lincoln-Douglas formats, qualifying to NSDA Nationals his sophomore and senior years. Some of his hobbies include hiking, fishing, cooking, and playing basketball.

Cory Wurtenberger

oo, info.

Hello! My name is Cory Wurtenberger, and I am currently a second-year at Vanderbilt University studying political science and Asian studies. I also compete in collegiate speech at Vandy and have coached privately since 2019. I competed in original oratory and informative speaking for all four years of high school in the absolutely brutal South Florida circuit. In 2017, I was fortunate enough to win my first national tournament: the Glenbrooks. I was able to defend my title in the coming years. In the 2018/2019 season, I really began to pick up momentum, winning the Glenbrooks, GMU, Sunvite, and Harvard consecutively, ending with a second-place finish at the Tournament of Champions. In 2020, I double-championed the NYC Invitational, placed 1st (O.O.) and 2nd (Info) at the Glenbrooks, defended my title at the Sunvitational, won Emory, placed 2nd at Harvard, and ended my career with a state championship in original oratory. This resulted in my being ranked 1st nationally in Original Oratory and Informative Speaking for the 2019/20 season by the NSDA and 3P, becoming the first competitor to do so. Essentially, I am super humble. Jokes aside, joining speech was the single best decision I have ever made. I can say with certainty, I would be nowhere near where I am today without it. Coaching through 3P allows me to, in a way, give back to the community that I owe so much to. Oratory and Info are special events and I would love nothing more than to help people find their voices within them.

Humor - I was always known as the “funny” speaker on the circuit and I can confidently say it was likely the most important factor towards my success. A lot of people who I’ve coached tell me that they’re not funny, but this is ridiculous. Everybody has a sense of humor and with the right writing, everyone can be the “funny” speaker.

Writing - I have written more oratories and informative speeches than I can count. I have edited more than I can even remember. I pride myself on being able to work with someone’s speech quite intensively while preserving their style. We are in control of very little in speech, but those 1300-1500 words are all ours.

Delivery - Delivery in speech is a bit of a paradox. You must speak conversationally to come off as genuine, but being so comfortable requires intensive practice. Most of my delivery coaching is centered around the goal of trying to speak to the audience, not at them.

Competition - Speech is absolutely about advocating and personal expression, but the competitive side of it is entirely valid and important. I have probably competed at more high school tournaments in O.O./Info then any person on Earth, so I have a backlog of tips and advice. Specifically about how certain tournaments work, how to change your speech for different audience sizes, and how to maintain energy in the seemingly endless tournament days.

To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.

Interested? Contact Cory!

Your message was sent! You can expect to hear back from Tyler within 2 business days.

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Ryan Mills SVUDL Invitational

2024 — nsda campus, ca/us.

Live Updates

Dear Colleagues,

The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) presents:

The SVUDL Ryan Mills Memorial Invitational. March 16-17

All proceeds from this tournament will go to the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League , a local non-profit organization whose mission is to empower Silicon Valley students, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status, to reach their full potential to become professional and community leaders by teaching critical thinking and communication skills through speech and debate programming.

Ryan Mills was a volunteer with the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) since its inception 10 years ago, through and until his untimely passing in March of 2021. Ryan was the consummate professional and a model volunteer, judging hundreds of rounds of competition for SVUDL over the years. He was one of the most sought after judges by our students, for not only his expansive debate knowledge, but also for the care in which he gave constructive feedback and shared resources, all with the idea of helping them grow as competitors and young adults. He was also an advocate for SVUDL in the wider community, building bridges that let our students access deeper coaching and opportunities to aid in their professional growth as well.

This tournament will be held online via NSDA Campus for all events.

All tournament registration will be on Tabroom.com. Information regarding online platform use for the tournament will be released in the coming weeks.

If you have any questions regarding the tournament or registration, please email Tournament Director Mariel Cruz at [email protected] or contact SVUDL at [email protected]

The system will accept new entries until March 12th at 8pm PST. Make drops and name changes through Tabroom after that up until March 15th. Fees will be frozen on Thursday, March 14 at 8pm PST. However, changes or drops made after Friday, March 17 at 8pm PST will be charged a $10 nuisance fee. All space in debate and speech will be allocated on a first come, first served based on the tournament caps listed below; register early!

Tournament Caps and Waitlist

In an attempt to balance school distribution in each event, each school will be allotted 6 entries per division per debate event. All entries over the caps will be waitlisted.

Entries may also be waitlisted if the tournament reaches capacity. Schools will be moved off the waitlist as space opens up. Schools that have not already taken up their allotted slots in each event will be moved first, and schools with completed judge entries will also be given preference. Remaining waitlisted entries will be moved on a first-come, first-serve basis.

TBA Entries

All TBA Entries will be waitlisted until names are entered. The deadline to enter names for TBA entries will be March 8, 2023. Any TBA entries without names after this date will be removed from the tournament.

Judging Requirements

Schools are required to fulfill at least 50% of their debate and events requirement when fees are assessed on Thursday, March 14. That means, you can’t buy out more than 50% of your judge commitment. Please see the list of fees for uncovered judge fees. Judge hire requests must be submitted by Friday, March 8 at 8pm PST. After this date, schools will be responsible for providing their own judges.

Schools will pay a judging penalty fee per speech slot, Congress entry, Lincoln Douglas/Duo Interp or debate team not covered by school judges. Please note, Congress judges may be asked to also judge speech since they will be in the same pattern and judge pool.

Judges are committed one round past where their school drops from competition. Judges are assumed to be experienced and prepared to judge their assigned events or debate formats. Debate judges are free to determine style questions at the beginning of each round. Debate judges must have properly linked Tabroom accounts for online ballot entry.

Speech judges are committed for all rounds of the day they are assigned to judge.

School judges who fail to check in to their rounds online when assigned may have their team fined the aforementioned penalties per round. Please contact us if you're unsure of your judging commitment, or have any other questions regarding judging.

Use this form to compute how much you will owe at registration:

Please note, all fees include a 3% surcharge to cover transaction fees for online payments. All schools paying by check will be eligible for a 3% discount on fees. If your school will be paying with a check, not paying online, please email [email protected] and your invoice will be adjusted for this discount.

__1__ School Fee X $36 = $36

____ number of Event entries/Congress entered X $42 = _____

____ number of Parli teams/PF teams X $88 = _____

____ number of LD entries X $62 = _____

____ number of Policy Teams X $88 = _____

____ number of World Schools Teams X $88 = _____

Penalties for Not Providing School Judges:

You are obligated to cover 50% of your judging requirement in debate and events with school judges.

____ Speech Event entries/Congress entries uncovered X $75 = _____

____ LD Entries/Public Forum/World Schools teams X $115 = _____

_____Parli/Policy entries uncovered X $165 = _____

Total Fees = ____________

Please email [email protected] if you are paying by check to ensure you receive the 3% discount. Please make checks payable to “Silicon Valley Urban Debate League” and mail to:

Silicon Valley Urban Debate League

502 Valley Way

Milpitas, CA 95035

Online payments can be made here !

If your school needs a W9, please see the SVUDL W9 linked on the right side of this page.

Following the mission of SVUDL, we would like to ensure that this tournament is made accessible to all teams that would like to participate. We understand that the current situation of COVID-19 may have put schools in unprecedented financial situations. If your school/program has concerns or issues regarding fees, please email [email protected] for information regarding fee discounts.

L/D Debate Topic: NSDA Mar/Apr topic

Policy Debate Topic: National topic on Fiscal Redistribution Policy

Public Forum: NSDA March Public Forum Topic

For parli, one topic will be provided for each prelim; for elim rounds, teams may be given three topics and will do strikes to determine the topic.

World Schools Debate - Topics will be provided in the coming weeks

All Speech and Debate events will offer a novice and open division. We reserve the right to collapse divisions if entry size is too small for two separate divisions. There will be only one division of World Schools Debate.

Novice is defined as a student’s first year of competition, or not advancing to an elimination round in your first two years of competition, regardless of debate format.

Double entries in Speech Events and Congress are allowed. Debate entries may not double enter.

General Tournament Rules

The tournament will consist of five prelims debate rounds and three preliminary rounds for speech. The number of elims will be determined based on entry size of each event. We reserve the right to combine divisions if the entry warrants.

Persuasive will include both advocacy (Original Advocacy) and other "persuasive" speeches (Original Oratory). Extemp is combined national and international. Semifinals will be held in individual events with 50 or more entries or the discretion of the tournament director. Undersubscribed events may waive finals. Due to scheduling, we will only be breaking to Double octos for debate, events, entries permitting.

Please designate the PO's with a 'po' for every ten entries via email to [email protected].

Bills will be posted on the tournament webpage on Tabroom.com a couple weeks prior to the start of the tournament. To submit bills for consideration, please email [email protected], with the subject line - Congress Bills, SVUDL tournament.

General Info

Pages & uploads, dates & deadlines.

These deadlines are set in Tabroom for technical purposes. Always consult the invitation or tournament notices for official policies about deadlines and procedures.

National Circuit Tournament Champions
State Champions
National Champions
Collegiate National Champions
Major Champions
Nat’l Points Race
Strategy Pieces

2021-2022 Year in Review

To review the year, Extemp Central compiled the top seven stories from the national circuit, which we hope our readers will enjoy.

#7: Non-Seniors Shine at NSDA Nationals

Continuing a recent trend, non-senior competitors advanced deep into this year’s NSDA national tournament in Louisville. Four non-seniors made the final round of International Extemp, while two made the final round of United States Extemp. In addition, three of the semi-finalists in International Extemp and six of the semi-finalists in United States Extemp were not seniors. And McKinley Paltzik, a junior, won International Extemp. This foreshadows what should be an entertaining season in 2021-2022 and might make the race for bids to the 2023 Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) Extemp Round Robin tighter.

#6: The Rise of the University of Kentucky Tournament of Champions vs. The Tournament of Champions of Extemporaneous Speaking

In 2003, Northwestern University created the last tournament of the existing major schedule with the Tournament of Champions (TOC) of Extemporaneous Speaking. At the time, there were no other TOCs available for speech and debate competitors since the University of Kentucky’s TOC was debate specific. All of that changed in 2012, when UK began to offer speech events as part of its TOC and just recently, the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions (NIETOC) opened its doors to extemporaneous speakers too. This rise in TOC offerings has fractured some of the post-season, with some extempers and programs having to decide which tournaments to attend. This year, the UK TOC drew a field that was double the size of the Extemp TOC despite both competitions taking place online. The Extemp TOC was hurt by running opposite a few state tournaments, but one wonders whether UK’s TOC is encroaching on the major status that the Extemp TOC has enjoyed for two decades.

#5: Veluvali Comes Close to Adding More Majors

Ananth Veluvali of Edina High School (MN) came into the season as an extemper to watch after winning the 2021 National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) Grand National Tournament. Since Minnesota’s speech season does not start until January, it was not surprising that Veluvali stormed up the National Points Race in the second half of the season, especially in the major tournaments. At the MBA Round Robin, Veluvali lost to McKinley Paltzik by two ranks and finished second. At the Extemp TOC, Veluvali lost to Cameron Roberts by four ranks. A few weeks later, Veluvali’s defense of his NCFL title came one placing short as he was runner-up to Daniel Kind. And at NSDA Nationals, Veluvali returned to the final round of United States Extemp, finishing third. Veluvali also finished second at the UK TOC to Paltzik. Even though he came shy of adding more major championships to his collection, Veluvali posted one of the more impressive runs across major tournaments in recent years and he ended the season third in the National Points Race.

#4: Kind Goes Wire-to-Wire in the Extemp Central National Points Race

This season saw the resumption of the Extemp Central National Points Race after a six year absence. The use of a virtual platform for a lot of national circuit tournaments gave greater access, but that did not make for as close of a competition as expected. Daniel Kind of Lake Highland Preparatory School stormed out to an early lead after winning the University of Kentucky’s National Speech and Debate Season Opener and never dropped from the top spot. The closest that Kind came to losing the number one ranking was when McKinley Paltzik won Yale and the New York City Invitational and trailed Kind by a 128-110 point margin. After that, Kind pulled away by winning the Florida Blue Key, Glenbrooks, and George Mason University Patriot Games. He clinched the National Points Race in style by winning the NCFL National Championship in late May, becoming the first extemper to win the competition before NSDA nationals. When the season was over, Kind set new National Points Race records for total points (1,063), wins (7), top three finishes (12), and final round appearances (12). Those marks will be difficult for future extempers to eclipse barring an expansion of the tournaments that count for the National Points Race.

#3: Alisky Comes From Behind to Win NSDA

Regular readers of Extemp Central knew who Peter Alisky was going into NSDA Nationals. Prior to NSDA Alisky, who competed for Smoky Hill High School (CO), reached the final round of four National Points Race events, most notably finishing fifth at the MBA Extemp Round Robin in March, and successfully defending his United States Extemp state championship. At NSDA, Alisky qualified for the final round of United States Extemp with a cumulative ranking to that point of sixty-three, ten behind leader Kush Narang of Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA). That put Alisky in fifth place. However, a powerful and persuasive speech in the final round earned Alisky a cumulative score of seventeen when high and low ranks were eliminated. He won the final by twenty ranks and ended up winning Colorado’s first extemporaneous speaking national championship. What made Alisky’s final round notable is that he earned a first place rank from eight of the thirteen final round judges, thereby posting one of the most dominating final round performances in NSDA history.

#2: Paltzik Wins Two Majors as a Junior

Last season, McKinley Paltzik of Phoenix Country Day School (AZ) foreshadowed what was to come by placing fourth as a sophomore in International Extemp at NSDA. She quickly established herself as one of this season’s strongest competitors, winning the Yale Invitational for the second time, as well as the New York City Invitational. After falling in elimination rounds at Glenbrooks, the University of Texas Longhorn Classic, and Harvard, Paltzik stormed back and won the MBA Round Robin in March, the UK TOC in April, and the NSDA National Championship in International Extemp to end the season. Like Peter Alisky, Paltzik rallied in the final round with a great speech that set NSDA records, overcoming a ten rank deficit against National Points Race winner Daniel Kind by earning nine of the thirteen available first place ranks. Since 2003, sixteen extempers, including Paltzik, have won multiple major championships, and Paltzik has a chance next season to achieve a Grand Slam, something that no extemper has managed to do since 2005.

#1: Back in Person…Sort of?

During the 2021-2022 academic year, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were uneven on the state level. Circuits locally and nationally had to grapple with the best way to mitigate its effects while still hosting competitions. For example, whereas some states like Kentucky and California kept most tournaments online, other states like Texas and Florida hosted more in-person competitions. Many of this season’s national circuit events took place online as the universities that hosted them were not willing or prepared to welcome hundreds of competitors from multiple states onto their campuses. In one instance, Stanford cancelled its regular tournament, but was still able to award National Points Race points after it hosted an online event called the Palm Classic. However, three of the four major tournaments – the MBA Extemp Round Robin, the NCFL Grand National Championship, and the NSDA National Championship – took place in-person. The shift in formats required flexibility among competitors, some of whom attended their first in-person tournament in more then two years at nationals this season. Interesting questions abound for next season as well in terms of whether national circuit tournaments resume in-person and what this does to tournament participation since the financial barriers that kept extempers from traveling before will be reimposed.