Minimum Tournament Standards

Speechranks accepts results from tournaments hosted by the following private Christian Homeschool Speech and Debate Organizations/Leagues:
- Christian Communicators of America
- Christian Communicators of the SouthEast
- Christian Communicators of Tennessee
- Stoa

Purpose:

The intent of posting tournaments is to recognize participation in legitimate competitive events that represent a general baseline of competition nationwide and may therefore be compared. Our policy is an imperfect way to implement this intent and the purpose statement shall trump the policy.
(Our concern is that people may try to figure out ways to meet the policy while ignoring its purpose.)

Policy:

A "tournament" must meet the following minimum standards to be posted on Speechranks.

Dates:

October 1 through the end of season tournaments in May/June.

Tournament Announcement:

Tournaments must abide by the guidelines of their respective parent organization/league.

Speech Events

At least three rounds must be competed at the tournament.
- All students do not need to compete this many rounds as some students may be eliminated during the course of the tournament.
- Please do not attempt Semifinal rounds as the last round as this may lead to unbreakable ties that Speechranks cannot accommodate.

Debate Events:

At least six rounds must be competed. (Minimum of four preliminary rounds.)
- All students do not need to compete this many rounds as some students may be eliminated during the course of the tournament.
- A minimum of 8 teams must participate in the debate event (team = student in Lincoln Douglas and Individual Policy debate)
- For events with a limited number of students, plan the number of rounds carefully as no student/team should receive more than one bye recorded as a win.
- Student Congress events are excepted from the six round requirement as these events are competed differently. These events must follow the guidelines prescribed by their parent organization/league.

Additional Standards:

1. Any attempt to alter event participation for the purpose of earning Points or Green Check Marks is illegitimate and not in keeping with the Purpose of the website.

2. Points and Green Check Marks are assigned after the completion of the entire event - not after preliminary rounds.
- Students should be available and are expected to participate through to the completion of the tournament.

3. Speechranks is meant to collect information from Senior or Varsity level events.
- These events represent the highest level of competition at a tournament.
- Events that are "Novice", or "Junior", or "Junior Varsity", or "Breakout" events cannot be posted to this website as there is no way to meaningfully compare these events to Senior level or Varsity events.
- Students in Platform and Interpretive events should be presenting memorized speeches.
- “Practice events", “round robins", online events, or events where a significant percentage of students are using scripts would be examples of tournaments that cannot be posted to this website.

4. Christian forensics training seeks to glorify God.
- The ultimate goal should not be to earn points or Green Check Marks on this website. If that becomes the primary reason for hosting and posting an event, the Christian forensics community is missing the mark.

Speechranks can accommodate either mono (single person) or duo (two persons as partners) speech events. It is not possible to include speech events that allow for both mono or duo, or duo or trio participation in a single event. Trio (three persons as partners) speech events cannot be listed.

To tournament administrators,

Please make sure you understand how Speechranks calculates points and awards Green Check Marks when planning your tournament. Visit the Speechranks Point and Recognition (Green Check Mark) System for details.

Further Reading