At long last, we're happy to announce the publication of new resources for tournament direction and hosting as part of a site-wide update of materials this school year. Many teachers, as part of the Middle School Public Debate Program, decide to get together with other schools to have tournaments through leagues. Here at at Claremont, we provide support and training to make these competitions meaningful and well-organized events for students, teachers, and parents.
If you're familiar with the competitive side of our programming, you already know that we are the only debating program in the United States to require training and certification for judges in competition. But you may not know that we are also the only program in the US to require that the people who administer tournaments be trained and certified by us.
For the last two years, the Tournament Director training program has been in a trial process. We have trained only a handful of Tournament Directors - most notably Desert Valleys Debate League (DVDL) Tournament Director Kelley Bieringer and Big Apple Debate League (BADL) Tournament Director Alberto Duarte. But this year, everything is changing - we are dramatically expanding to add and solidify new leagues, and with that will come a whole new group of willing and capable volunteers.
New online at our Tournament Administration Resources page, are a number of resources to support this effort, including the first edition of our Tournament Director's Manual, a document about how to host a tournament, and a variety of resources for tournament administration. Anyone interested in what a tournament is like, even if they aren't interested in directing tournaments themselves, should look these resources over.
We look forward to the new season and the new additions to our network of volunteers!
