2026 Christmas in the Ozarks

If you have participated in a Speech and Debate tournament before, you know the importance of parent judges. Our goal is to provide a quality tournament for all the families who prepare for, practice for, pay for, and travel to the tournament. Part of this effort is to have three judges in every speech room in every round and adequate judges throughout the preliminary and outrounds of debate. This will require EVERYONE'S participation. To achieve this goal, we have set up the following guidelines for ALL parent judges:

1  Parent/Adult Judge Presence Required at Tournament

Every student must have a participating parent/adult judge present at the tournament. ALL competitors must be accompanied by their parents, and each parent must either be a full-time staff member or fulfill the commitment of judging 3 rounds per day. While we understand that it is sometimes more convenient or cost-effective for families to send their students to tournaments with other families, this severely strains the availability of parent judges. For this reason, students may not attend with another family without the express permission of tournament leadership. In those cases, you must arrange for another parent or a community judge to fulfill the judging requirement. 

2  Parent Judging Requirements

3  Parent Check-In and Judging

Parents will be required to participate in a check-in process that will be simultaneous to the student check-in. We also need you to arrive at Ballot Push at least 30 minutes before each round to see if we need you to judge.

4  Our Pledge to You

Although fulfilling judging requirements is essential to providing a quality tournament, we understand this commitment can be demanding and exhausting. For this reason, we pledge to recruit as many community judges as possible in the weeks leading up to the tournament. We are committed to recruiting community judges, but we also need YOU to fulfill your judging minimum.

Thank you for working with us to make this a quality tournament for everyone!