REGENT

The tournament has not posted this year's details yet. You can register now, but use the following information for reference only and check back later for updates.

Dear Speech and Debate Community:

The tournament will be set up this week. With the California state tournament occupying our normal weekend right before the NSDA last chance online qualifier, we will be offering 4 rounds in the 2 days before the qualifier (2 rounds each on Tuesday and Wednesday, starting at 4pm Pacific) to give everyone a chance to get their last bit of practice in. Thank you for your interest!

Last year’s tournament was our first under the Regent Legacy banner and welcomed over 650 entries from 50 schools in 5 states and 2 countries. We are tremendously grateful for your support which makes it possible to both continue the Conejo Valley tradition of excellence and work to expand opportunities for school communities that have been deprived of speech and debate opportunities in recent decades.

On Saturday we will be offering middle school and high school divisions of 6 preliminary rounds of Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum, with debate elimination rounds taking place on Sunday. On Sunday, we will offer all middle school, high school novice, and high school open/varsity divisions in CHSSA and SCJFL speech events with three preliminary rounds plus finals.

Students are encouraged to double enter in speech events and to compete “up” in debate for the additional challenge. For the purposes of our tournament, we define “novices” as high school students who’ve attended 5 or fewer tournaments and we encourage experienced middle school competitors to compete in high school divisions with coach permission. We also reserve the right to collapse divisions and merge events as entries warrant but will do so to best preserve the spirit and character of each particular event. Students who compete on speech events on Sunday and are in debate elimination rounds do so at their own risk.

We will be using the November/December topics in Lincoln- Douglas and Public Forum. Both Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum will be double-flighted. All events will be conducted live on the NSDA Campus platform.

We are looking forward to hosting all of you and wish you a joyous holiday season!

Debate Topics:
Lincoln-Douglas Topic: September/October (plea bargaining) or November/December Topic (rewilding)
Public Forum Topic: November/December Topic (encrypted communications)

Divisions:

Middle School, High School Novice, and High School Open in all events and Elementary School in selected events.
Experienced middle school students are encouraged to compete in the high school novice division with coach approval.
We define a “novice” as a high school student who has attended 5 or fewer tournaments.

Patterns:

Speech Pattern A: Extemp, Spar, Dramatic Interp, Original Oratory, Middle School Persuasive, Middle School Prose, Duo Interp, Original Prose & Poetry
Speech Pattern B: Impromptu, Humorous Interp, Middle School Speech to Entertain, Informative, Elementary Platform Speaking, Middle School Poetry, Program Oral Interp, Middle School Storytelling, Declamation, Original Advocacy
Debate: all events in one pattern. Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum will be double flighted.

Judges:

Experienced high school varsity competitors in their senior year can judge novice and middle school division students.
All judges are expected to have an electronic device (laptop/desktop computer, iPad/tablet, or at minimum a compatible smartphone) capable of accessing the NSDA Campus platform and we will charge nuisance fees if judge problems cause the tournament to run late.
All debate judges are also expected to have a basic judging paradigm available on tabroom.com for students to review before rounds.

Electronic Device Failure Policy
We strongly encourage all students and judges to use a wired Internet connection and have a backup device and backup connection (like a hotspot) ready to go in the event of device failure or loss of an Internet connection. In the event of device failure or loss of connection, students and coaches should notify the tournament immediately and will have 10 minutes to restore their connection and return digitally to their round. If the student or judge is unable to return in time, we will make reasonable accommodations to attempt to allow the affected students to finish their round – speech students may have to give their speeches to their judge in a backup competition room or will be judged on the basis of their interrupted performance. Policy, Parli, and Public Forum debaters may have to continue as “mavericks” without their partner and Lincoln-Douglas debaters may have to forfeit their round.

Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy
We are following the guidelines of the NSDA on generative artificial intelligence, as found in the NSDA’s most recent 2025-2026 High School Unified Manual:
“In events in which speeches must be the original created work of a competitor (OO, INF, IX, USX, SW, EXC, IMP, EXP) students are prohibited from quoting or paraphrasing text directly from generative AI sources. Generative AI should not be cited as a source. The exception is that a student delivering a speech about the topic of AI may quote AI to illustrate their points about AI, in accordance with existing quoted word limits. While generative AI may be used to guide students to articles, ideas, and sources, the original source of any quoted or paraphrased evidence must be available if requested.
In debate events, generative AI should not be cited as a source; while generative AI may be used to guide students to articles, ideas, and sources, the original source of any quoted or paraphrased evidence must be available if requested.
In Interpretation events, students are prohibited from performing material created by generative AI sources. Generative AI should not be used as a source of material; while generative AI may be used to guide students to articles, ideas, and material, the original source of any material that is performed must be available if requested.”

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy
We believe that the cross-cultural understanding that forensics develops in understanding how different people experience the world differently and understanding different sides of an argument is one of the most important life skills that the activity develops. Thus we are proud to support the ongoing efforts of the NSDA and other forensics organizations to promote understanding. We will be including relevant language on our tournament ballots and will address judge sensitivity during our judge training.

Accessibility Policy:
In keeping with our above DEI policy, we encourage coaches to contact us directly regarding any accommodations that the tournament needs to make to create an inclusive environment for all students.

General Rules:
The tournament will consist of six preliminary rounds of debate plus four elimination rounds and three preliminary rounds of speech plus finals. All divisions will receive awards and we reserve the right to combine divisions if the entry warrants. We will also make every effort to accelerate the tournament on Sunday so that East Coast teams will be able to get to bed at a reasonable hour on a school night.

Sweepstakes:
We will offer two sets of sweepstakes awards – 1st through 3rd in speech and 1st through 3rd in debate.

Speech Rules:
We will generally follow CHSSA rules for high school events and SCJFL rules for middle school events, with exceptions considered on a case-by-case basis at the sole discretion of the tournament director. All speeches are expected to be the original work of the student and may not have been used in competition prior to August 2025. Extemp will be combined national and international, with rounds themed around questions of domestic, international, and economic issues. Impromptu topics will relate to the holiday season. Events with small entries will be folded into similar events. We will also use the “sudden death” format to tabulate the placement of students in final rounds rather than “total cume.”

Debate Rules:
We again will generally follow CHSSA rules for high school competition and SCJFL rules for middle school and elementary school competition, with exceptions considered on a case-by-case basis at the sole discretion of the tournament director. Each program may have one hybrid team with another program but double entries will not be allowed in debate due to the tournament schedule. “Maverick” debaters in Policy, Public Forum, and Parliamentary Debate will only be allowed under extreme circumstances. We also will not break brackets to avoid teams from the same program hitting each other. Computers are allowed in all debate events except Parliamentary Debate, in which case computers may be used in prep but not during actual rounds. Please also refer to the above NSDA rules regarding artificial general intelligence.

REGENT LEGACY INVITATIONAL

21-22 April 2026

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