Tournaments run on volunteer judges! State and National tournaments will hire judges, but our local tournaments only wrap up before 9pm with the help of volunteer judges.  The most important piece of judging is giving feedback: what the students competing have done well, and where they could improve.  The other piece of judging is ranking in Speech events, or choosing a winner in Debate events. 

Judging need not be an all day commitment, and you can select the category to judge: Speech or Debate.  Food is provided, along with coffee.  Please consider volunteering to judge at one to two tournaments a season where your student is competing.  

Club dues are paid at the beginning of the season and cover a team T-shirt, membership in NSDA for new members, Club membership in NSDA, access to  resources, learning materials, and tutorials, snacks at tournaments, and lastly they help with costs to away tournaments like State or Nationals. 

Tournament Fees: tournaments  charge students by the event.  If a student signs up for one event, they will have an event fee for that single event, usually $6-10. More experienced Speech and Debaters often double enter in events, so they will have multiple fees for a single tournament. 

Each semester the team signs up to work concessions at a school sporting event.  The money raised goes into the team account to help pay for trips, snacks at tournaments, cords for graduating seniors, pins for students who complete the year and have earned a minimum of 25 competition points, and to fund home tournaments.