2025 First Coast Florida Classic

First Coast (FL) · Mar 6-8, 2025

Completed 6:20 AM Eastern

Community Judge FAQs

Why do you need community judges?

Simply put, judges are the most important participants in a tournament. Without you, we cannot hold a tournament, and students aren't given feedback that helps them improve their skills.

Additionally, community judges, in particular, listen and judge from a different perspective than a parent, and so your feedback helps them learn and grow in their skills in different ways. Our goal is to develop communicators who can speak boldly and change the world for Christ, not debaters who overwhelm judges with information or do not have the ability to adapt their message to the listener.

Why do you need SO MANY judges?

At a tournament, we can have as many as 100 or more competitors competing in 3 styles of debate and 13 speech events across three days. This requires a large number of judges! For example, a typical tournament day will have 4 to 5 debate rounds and 2 speech rounds. For each round, we need to staff 15-20 rooms with at least 1 and up to 3 judges. This means that tournaments generally have about 200 judge slots to fill per day for a tournament to run smoothly and on time.

What about the parents?

All of our parents are required to judge throughout the tournament whenever there are empty slots that we cannot fill from the community. We prefer to utilize community judges whenever possible to allow students to present their cases (for debate) and speeches to new audiences.

Who is qualified to be a judge?

Generally, anyone who has completed high school and has been adequately trained (don't worry - we provide this) can serve as a judge. Most judges fall into three categories of individuals:

Community volunteers
Parents and Coaches
Former high school or college debaters

What types of events will I be judging?

Our tournament has two basic types of events - speech and debate.

In debate, students compete to present and explain their ideas or proposals to a judge. Judges are asked to weigh the presented information and decide which side has the stronger case. 

Speech events run the gamut from prepared speeches to impromptu speeches where competitors have two minutes to outline a five-minute speech. Some speeches are humorous, others are inspirational, and others informative. 

Please see our Event Descriptions page for a full list of events and descriptions.

Who are the students I will be judging?

The competitors are homeschooled students aged 12-18 years old. Some students are just starting to learn debate or are just now giving their first speeches, and others have been competing for years. Many are from the Atlanta area, but we also have students travel nationwide to compete. So, you will see a wide range of skills, abilities, and styles.

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