2024 Resolve Early Tournament

Parent Judging Info

If you have participated in a Speech and Debate tournament before, then you are aware of the importance of parent judges. It is our goal to provide a quality tournament to all of the families who prepare for, practice, pay for and travel to RET. Part of this effort is to have 3 judges in every speech room in every round as well as adequate judges throughout the rounds of debate. This will require EVERYONE'S participation. In order 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. While we understand that it is sometimes more convenient or cost effective for families to send their students to tournaments with other families, this puts a severe strain on the availability of parent judges. For this reason, you must either be present with your student at RET, or you must have another adult who can feasibly fulfill all of your judging responsibilities.

2. Parent judging requirements:

We understand that for larger families with multiple students participating, the system may generate an unachievable number of rounds for you to judge. Parents with 1 or more competitors at RET need to plan to judge for all 3 speech rounds. Parli competitors will be required to have a parent judge a minimum of 2 rounds, including Round 6 (our highest needs round.) Each Team Policy and Lincoln Douglas debater will be required to supply a parent judge for at least 3 rounds, including Round 6. 

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 will also be depending on you to come to Ballot Push at least 30 minutes before each and every round to check and see if we need you to judge.

4. Our committment to you: 

Even though fulfilling judging requirements is essential to providing a quality tournament, we do understand that this commitment can be demanding and exhausting. For this reason, we pledge to you that we will do our best to recruit as many community judges as possible in the weeks leading up to the tournament. We often recruit a large number of community judges, but we are sometimes still not able to fulfill the goal of 3 judges in every speech round due to lack of parent judges. We are committed to recruiting as many community judges as possible, but we also need YOU to fulfill your judging minimum.

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