RYAN MILLS

RYAN MILLS SVUDL INVITATIONAL

21 February 2026 for speech
21-22 February 2026 for debate

DEADLINE

16 Feb 2026
NO REFUNDS AFTER THIS DATE

ELIGIBILITY

Open to middle and high school students

PLATFORM

Online through NSDA Campus

Information

Dear Colleagues,
The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) presents: The SVUDL Ryan Mills Memorial Invitational. February 21-22, 2026

All proceeds from this tournament will go to the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League, a local non-profit organization whose mission is to empower Silicon Valley students, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status, to reach their full potential to become professional and community leaders by teaching critical thinking and communication skills through speech and debate programming.

Ryan Mills was a volunteer with the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) since its inception more than 10 years ago, through and until his untimely passing in March of 2021. Ryan was the consummate professional and a model volunteer, judging hundreds of rounds of competition for SVUDL over the years. He was one of the most sought after judges by our students, for not only his expansive debate knowledge, but also for the care in which he gave constructive feedback and shared resources, all with the idea of helping them grow as competitors and young adults. He was also an advocate for SVUDL in the wider community, building bridges that let our students access deeper coaching and opportunities to aid in their professional growth as well.

This tournament will be held online via NSDA Campus for all events.

Judging Requirements

All debate judges are required to be available for all prelim rounds, and for Debate Elim 1 and Debate Elim 2. Beyond that, all debate judges from a school are obligated until one round past where the last student from their school is eliminated, even if their own child had gotten eliminated way before then.
Judges are assumed to be experienced and prepared to judge their assigned events or debate formats. Debate judges are free to determine style questions at the beginning of each round.
Debate judges must have properly linked Tabroom accounts for online ballot entry.
Speech judges are committed for all rounds of the day they are assigned to judge.
School judges who fail to check in to their rounds online when assigned may have their team fined the aforementioned penalties per round.

Topics

LD Debate Topic: NSDA Mar/Apr topic AND NSDA Jan/Feb - Novice and Open divisions of both topics will be offered, pending enough entries register for the event
Public Forum: NSDA Feb AND March Public Forum Topic - Novice and Open divisions of both topics will be offered, pending enough entries register for the event

Divisions

All Speech and Debate events will offer a novice and open division. We reserve the right to collapse divisions if entry size is too small for two separate divisions.
Novice is defined as a student’s first year of competition, or not advancing to an elimination round in your first two years of competition, regardless of debate format.

General Tournament Rules

The tournament will consist of five preliminary debate rounds for varsity, five prelims debate rounds for novice, and the three preliminary rounds of varsity and open events. We reserve the right to combine divisions if the entry warrants.
Persuasive will include both advocacy (Original Advocacy) and other "persuasive" speeches (Original Oratory).
Extemp is combined national and international.
Semifinals will be held in individual events with 50 or more entries or the discretion of the tournament director. Undersubscribed events may waive finals.
Due to scheduling, we will only be breaking to Double octos for debate, events, entries permitting.

Speech Elims

Speech events we will break the top 6 to finals in events that have up to 30 entries. Divisions with more than 30 entries will have the top 12 advance to Semi-Finals, divisions with more than 51 entries will have three sections of Semi-finals with 6 competitors advancing to finals, and divisions with more than 85 entries will break to a quarterfinal. We will award trophies up to the top 6 in all speech events, and medals to Semifinalists and Quarterfinals. Placement will be determined by cumulative ranking. Events with 30+ will have a semis and a finals. Non-TOC NIETOC events above 51 contestants will have a Semifinal with 6 entries per section.
Bid levels for TOC Speech events will be determined by entry size, as dictated by TOC entry requirements.

Entry Price

PF and parent is judging $95
PF + 1 speech event and parent is judging $135
PF + 2 speech events and parent is judging $180
PF and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $235
PF + 1 speech event and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $300
PF + 2 speech events and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $350

LD and parent is judging $110
LD + 1 speech event and parent is judging $150
LD + 2 speech events and parent is judging $195
LD and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $250
LD + 1 speech event and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $320
LD + 2 speech events and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $370

One speech event and parent is judging $90
Two speech events and parent is judging $135
One speech event and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $190
Two speech events and parent is OPTING OUT of judging $235

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

Please note, this schedule allows double entry between speech and debate events, but competitors are responsible for getting to their rounds on time. If you are double entered, ask to speak first during your first round of speech.
All debate events are single flighted

Saturday, Feb 21
8:00am - Speech Rd 1 (Extemp Prep at 7:30am)
8:30am - Debate Rd 1
10:15am - Debate Rd 2
10:45am - Speech Rd 2 (Extemp Prep at 10:30am)
12:00pm - Debate Rd 3
12:45pm - Speech Rd 3 (Extemp Prep at 12:30pm)
2:00pm - Debate Rd 4
3:00pm - Speech Elim 1 (Extemp prep at 2:45pm)
4:00pm - Debate Rd 5
5:15pm - Speech Elim 2
Awards at 7pm

Sunday, Feb 22
8:30am - Debate Rd 6
11:30am - Debate Elim 1
2:30pm - Debate Elim 2
4:30pm - Debate Elim 3
6:30pm - Debate Elim 4
8:00pm - Debate Elim 5 *only if needed

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

* Indicates required field

Student Name *

First

Last

Student Email (DO NOT USE PARENT'S EMAIL) *

Student Phone Number *

Does the student have a Tabroom account? *

Yes and it is linked with GSA's account(s) Yes but it is not linked and we need you to add to your roster No but I will create one before submitting registration

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.

Parent Name *

First

Last

Parent Email *

Parent Phone Number *

EVENT SELECTION
Got any questions? Please email [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Division *

Novice Open

JUDGE PROVISION
Descriptions of each event can be found here.

Will you (parent) be judging at this tournament? *

Judge Name *

Judge email (Must be linked to a tabroom account. Register first at tabroom.com before completing this sign up) *

Judge phone *

Does your judge have a Tabroom account? *

Yes No but I will create one before submitting registration Not judging

Does your judge understand that he/she is responsible for the entire tournament schedule and that missing a round incurs fines from the tournament? *

Yes, understood Not judging but understood as well

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

I will keep a copy of this form for reference. *

YES

We are signing up with the understanding that my child will work to be ready by the tournament date. If we choose to drop out because my child is not ready that will be considered when making assessments for future classes. *

YES

I understand that if I fail to drop the tournament before the deadline that I will still be responsible for the fees of both my son or daughter, along with that of his or her partner and the fines. *

YES

I understand that if payment is not received we won't be registered and our spot will be given up to someone else. *

YES

I confirm that I have completed all necessary paperwork for this tournament. *

YES

I understand that The Golden State Academy has no control over tournament entries other than the initial sign up. I understand that my child's priority will be based on either the last time I signed up OR the date paid, whichever is latest. *

YES

I understand that my child must check in and check out periodically at the tournament with the coach and that if I do not my child will be barred from participating in following tournaments. This is to ensure coaches can see where students are at competitively and to give any initial feedback for improvement. *

YES

I understand that I can check my entry status through tabroom.com. *

YES

I am a consenting adult. I understand that by submitting this form I agree to all that has been covered. *

YES

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