Reminders for Tomorrow Morning's Tournament One

Dear Conference “A” and Conference “AA” Coaches,

A few brief reminders:

First, please check latest registrations for:

• Conf “A” Varsity Official Registration
• Conf “A” JV Official Registration
• Conf “AA” Official Registration

Confirm with students and judges and advise of any changes ASAP. If you know of any additional judges who you wish to bring, please let me know and we’d be happy to use them.

As of Saturday morning, changes you know of should come directly (ASAP) to the tournament directors as follows:

For Conference “AA” at Douglass, please call/text tournament director Desiree Weber with all changes on Saturday morning as soon as you’re aware of them:

3 1 2 – 6 1 8 – 8 1 0 9

For Conference “A” Varsity at Locke Lord, please call/text tournament director Les Lynn with all changes on Saturday morning as soon as you’re aware of them:

3 1 2 – 8 4 8 – 2 2 7 1

For Conference “A” JV at Chicago Ag, please call/text David Song with all changes on Saturday morning as soon as you’re aware of them:

8 4 7 – 9 5 1 – 9 6 6 2

Second, please note locations of the tournaments for this weekend:

The 2011 Locke Lord LLP “A” Varsity CDL Season Opener
Locke Lord LLP
111 S. Wacker Dr.
Chicago, IL

Conference “A” JV
Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences
3857 W. 111th St.
Chicago, IL

Conference “AA”
Frederick Douglass Academy
543 N. Waller Ave.
Chicago, IL

Third, please note T1 schedule.

* All schools should plan to arrive around 8 am on Saturday, where we start serving breakfast. Our dedicated, wonderful judge table staff will begin calling you not long after that time if you have not yet arrived at the tournament. We have your cell phone numbers and will use them to ensure we’re on-time, so please call us with your changes since we WILL call you otherwise.

* As soon as you are ready to leave your school and get on the bus Saturday morning, please call/text any changes as soon as you know them. Showing up to the tournament without communicating a changed registration in a timely fashion will mean your students are left off the pairing and forfeited. Changes must be called/texted in by 8:15 am at the latest on Friday, but we’d strongly suggest informing of changes by 8 am, or earlier.

* Our tournaments run on-time. We respect your time and value the contribution you make to the experience of students from your school and all the others that are a part of the league, it is a professional expectation that coaches ensure their students and judges arrive on time and are ready to debate at scheduled times. Those who are late for debates or have unannounced changes are asking for exceptions that would delay the tournament for everyone else’s students, which we can’t allow.

* Forfeits will occur 15 minutes after the start of each announced round. For Round 1 Saturday morning, 8:45 am is the forfeit time at Locke Lord and 9:15 am at Chicago Ag and Douglass. Please make sure you plan enough travel time and check with your judges in the morning as well – having students lose their first debate due to tardiness is not the way to start a day of competition with elimination rounds in the balance.

* All schools will stay until departure at 6 pm following awards on Saturday – no school leaves before first departure at our tournaments and your students are certainly in contention for awards and don’t want to miss the excitement of the awards ceremony.

* We appreciate judges, even relatively inexperienced ones, being willing and ready to judge debates to enable students to compete in preliminary debates.

We look forward to great competition. Please update tournament directors directly with registration changes in the morning.