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The Golden State Academy
  • Home
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    • Meet Our Coaches
    • Why Speech and Debate
    • What is Speech and Debate? >
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      • Debate Events
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    • Elementary Fall 2025
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    GEORGETOWN SPRING

    28-30 March 2025 for PF
    29-30 March 2025 for LD
    28-29 March 2025 for Speech

    DEADLINE
    25 March 2025
    NO REFUNDS AVAILABLE
    WITHDRAWALS INCUR AN ADDITIONAL CHARGE
    ELIGIBILITY
    Open to middle and high school students
    PLATFORM
    Online through NSDA Campus

    Information

    Hello coaches,
    This is the invite for the Georgetown Spring Invitational 2025. The tournament will be held on March 28-30, 2025.

    Divisions and Resolutions:
    The tournament will offer a wide range of PF divisions along with LD
    • LD -- LD will offer the January/February topic and the March/April topic.
    • PF - Students can enter in either the February topic division or the April topic division.
    • Additional divisions: Extemp; OO (Pre-recorded); DI, Informative.
    • Debaters may “debate up.” For instance, a 2nd year high school debaters may debate in the varsity division. Debaters may not “debate down.” If you are in your 3rdyear, you may not debate in the JV or Novice division. Teams of two debaters with different years of experience must debate to the level of the debater with the most experience. For example, a team that is made up of a 4-yearhigh school student and a 2-year high school student must debate in varsity.

    Debate and tournament times:
    • PF will use the standard 4-4-3-4-4-3-3-3-3-2-2 time format with 4 MINUTES of in-round prep time.
    • LD will use the standard 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 time format with 5 MINUTES of in-round prep time.
    • Debaters and judges are expected to be in their online rooms 15 minutes before the round starts. Rounds are expected to start no more than 15 minutes after the blasted start time. Should a team not show up by the 15 minute mark, they will forfeit the round.
    • The tournament will allow 10 minutes of emergency tech time should a student’s computer or network/internet connection fail.

    Judging restrictions:
    • Judges must be available to judge for the entire tournament schedule.
    • For MS PF, any high school student with at least 1 year of high school debate experience may judge.
    • For Novice High School PF, any high school student with at least 2 years of debate experience may judge.
    • For JV and Varsity High School PF, only adults that have left high school may judge.

    Judging obligations:
    • All judges are obligated for Friday and Saturday (full days). Judges of teams that are in the last elim round on Saturday will be obligated for Sunday morning.
    • The tournament and the tabroom are not responsible for informing judges of their obligations. Questions such as “When am I done?” or “Why do I need to judge on Saturday?” should be handled by the coach in-charge of the program that brought you.
    • Judges that request rounds off must submit their requests through the coach that brought them. Be aware that these requests may trigger a fee.
    • It is the obligation of each individual to provide a quality and trained PF judge. This includes information on the event, how to use Tabroom’s Online Ballot system, and how to use NSDA Campus.
    • The tournament will provide a video on how to use Tabroom and how to judge: Links can be found here (Links coming soon).
    • During the tournament, the tab staff and tournament admins will be busy running the tournament. They will not be able to answer questions about judging or Tabroom/Campus on the day of the tournament or once the tournament has started.
    • Judges that do not meet the requirements of Tabroom/Campus use or are unfamiliar and untrained in the event that they are judging may be removed and their school charged a hired judge fee, or their teams may be removed from the tournament if there the judge pool drops below the minimum.

    Rules and guidelines not covered in this invitation will default to the ToC Tournament Handbook.

    ​Entry Price

    PF and parent is judging $120
    PF and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $270

    LD and parent is judging $150
    LD and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $330

    One speech event and parent is judging $150
    One speech event and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $250

    Two speech events and parent is judging $250
    Two speech events and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $350

    PF + OO and parent is judging $220

    PF + OO and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $370

    LD + OO and parent is judging $250
    LD + OO and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $430

    Missed round fine for judges: $200/round

    Each person in a PF/Duo team would be responsible of providing their own judge, so one PF/Duo team would need to either provide two judges, both pay the judge fee, or one of each option.

    Registration will not be complete until payment is received.
     
    NOTE: We will charge set up fees if we have to create tabroom.com accounts for judges. It is recommended you do so on your own.

    Schedule - EST

    Please note that all times are in EASTERN STANDARD TIME (EST).
    Green times have been converted to PST.


    ​SPEECH SCHEDULE

    Friday, March 28th
    6:30pm -- Round 1 Speech   --- 3:30 PM PST
    8pm -- Round 2 Speech   --- 5:00 PM PST

    Saturday, March 29th
    10am -- Round 3 Speech   --- 7:00 AM PST
    12pm -- Round 4 Speech   --- 9:00 AM PST
    2pm -- Elim 1 Speech   --- 11:00 AM PST
    4pm -- Elim 2 Speech   --- 1:00 PM PST
    ​6pm -- Elim 3 Speech   --- 3:00 PM PST


    DEBATE SCHEDULE

    Friday, March 28th
    6:30pm -- Pairings released   --- 3:30 PM PST
    7pm -- Round 1 PF   --- 4:00 PM PST
    8:30pm -- Round 2 PF   --- 5:30 PM PST

    Saturday, March 29th
    10am -- Round 3 PF/Round 1 LD   --- 7:00 AM PST
    12pm -- Round 4 PF/Round 2 LD   --- 9:00 AM PST
    2pm -- Round 5 PF/Round 3 LD   --- 11:00 AM PST
    4pm -- Round 6 PF/Round 4 LD   --- 1:00 PM PST
    ​6pm -- Elim 1 PF/Round 5 LD   --- 3:00 PM PST
    7:30pm -- Elim 2 PF/Elim 1 LD  --- 4:30 PM PST
    9pm -- Elim 3 PF/Elim 2 LD   --- 6:00 PM PST

    Sunday, March 30th
    10am -- Elim 4 PF/Elim 3 LD (as needed)  --- 7:00 AM PST
    12pm -- Elim 5 PF/Elim 4 LD (as needed)  --- 9:00 AM PST
    Judges are still obligated to attend this day even if their own child did not make it to further elimination rounds.

    Drop Fee

    Drop fees will be the same amounts as the entry fee PLUS any fees the tournament charges us for late drops. Drop requests should be made to Victor and Nadia.

    Please do not drop out last minute to avoid being charged these fees.

    Contact Info

    Victor Rivas Umana
    Contact email:  [email protected]

    Nadia Budiman 
    Contact email: [email protected]

    Or [email protected]

    Registration Form


    STUDENT INFORMATION
    If this is your first time competing, make sure to first create a Tabroom account here: https://www.tabroom.com/user/login/new_user.mhtml
    It's super simple and quick (<1 minute), but follow the guidelines here in case anything is confusing: ​https://docs.tabroom.com/Sign_Up

    PARENT CONTACT INFORMATION
    Your email address will be the one included when we send the logistics email.

    EVENT SELECTION
    ​
    Got any questions? Please email [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
    Make sure you understand that this online tournament is live and takes place in Eastern Time.
    BOTH partners must fill out form and pay in order to be registered!

    ​JUDGE PROVISION

    ​Click here to complete the highly recommended Cultural Competency judge training course

    Signing up a judge without having a Tabroom account will result in us charging you for the set up fee.
    ​You can do this easily on your own by going to tabroom.com. It literally takes less than a minute.


    First time judging?
    This is a great collection of short videos that one of the leagues have put together to learn each event: click here.
    ​There are also these training cards available that include a summary of each event's rules and comments.​
    ​Click here to find other training and official certification resources. Or watch our Youtube playlist here.
    ​

    ​Tournaments encourage judges to have a paradigm on their Tabroom account, which can be a few sentences on your preferences of debating styles, etc. See here for example. It doesn't need to be this long, but make sure to add something before you sign up. For example: "I am a parent, please speak clearly and slowly and avoid technical jargon".​

    ​
    More tournament resources can be found here.

    TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Submit/take to payment

We would love to have you visit soon at one of our open houses.
Check our home page for the schedule!


School year Hours

M-F: 3:45 pm - 8:30 pm 
Sun: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Telephone

510-270-8480
510-470-0531

Email (preferred)

For more info email us at: [email protected]

Locations

Fremont: 200 Brown Rd #201, Fremont, CA 94539

Cupertino: 20432 Silverado Avenue Suite 211, Cupertino, CA 95014

Aborn Institute: 2804 Riedel Road, San Jose, CA 95135 

​​​​Dublin: Loving Tree Academy, 6693 Owens Dr, Pleasanton, CA 94588​​
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Our Coaches
    • Why Speech and Debate
    • What is Speech and Debate? >
      • Speech Events
      • Debate Events
    • Why Golden State Academy
    • Tournament Photos
    • Tournament results
    • FAQ
  • Forms
  • Registration
    • Elementary Fall 2025
    • MS/HS Fall 2025
    • Private Coaching >
      • Speech Private Coaching
      • Debate Private Coaching
    • Elementary Summer 2025
    • MS/HS Summer 2025
    • GSA Tournaments
  • Store
  • Blog
  • Career Opportunities
  • Newsletter