SPARTAN

SPARTAN CLASSIC AT MSU

5 December 2026

DEADLINE

27 Nov 2026
NO REFUNDS AFTER THE DEADLINE

ELIGIBILITY

Open to MS/HS students

LOCATION

Online through NSDA Campus

Information

Dear Colleague:

On behalf of Michigan State University, we are pleased to invite you to participate the 2026 Spartan Classic Debate Tournament. We’re planning to host it fully online but are still committed to our partnership with Okemos High School (OHS). All fees paid to the tournament will be directly donated to the OHS Debate Team. The tournament will run December 5, 2026.

Scheduling
Our goal in hosting the Spartan Classic is to provide a service to regional programs – both in fundraising for OHS Debate and in creating a competitive opportunity for students at a regional tournament held in Michigan. With the move online, we’ve opted to keep our tournament schedule largely to accommodate the Eastern Time Zone to continue to serve those schools and programs. Schools from other time zones are certainly encouraged to attend but we wanted to provide a rationale for our scheduling choices.

Public Forum Details
For PF, we will open a Middle School, Novice, and Varsity division, but we reserve the right to condense MS into Novice based on numbers. We anticipate hosting either 4 or 5 prelims depending on entries and elimination rounds required (see schedule for additional details).
Mavericks are able to compete in all preliminary debates. In order to be eligible to receive speaker awards and participate in elimination debates, the competitors must debate as an in-tact pair for over 50% of the debates. Mavericks will not be permitted in elimination debates.

Awards
At this time, we only plan to ship physical awards to the finalists of each division. Given our desire to provide a low-cost option for online participation while donating fees to OHS Debate, we’ve tentatively opted to not ship more individual/team awards. If a physical award is important to a program’s school, students, etc. we can talk about options following the tournament.

Judging Requirements

We have a nuisance fee for judges who no-show debates that they are obligated and assigned to judge.
Any judge who arrives to a debate more than 15 minutes after the posted start time will incur a $50 fee.
Any judge who is a no-show will incur a $100 fee.
All judges are committed one round beyond the round in which the school they are judging for is eliminated. Thus, all judges are committed through the first elimination round. If your teams are eliminated in the quarterfinals for example, all of the people judging for your school are committed through the semifinals, etc. regardless of when the judge's own child got eliminated.

Tech Time and Forfeits
If a team is experiencing technical difficulties, they have 10 minutes of “tech time” to try and correct the issue. At the end of 10 minutes, the debate must proceed, or the team will need to forfeit.
Teams arriving 15 minutes or more past the start of the debate will forfeit their debates. Both the tech time rule and the rule about forfeits is to ensure that the tournament can stay on schedule.

Online Format
We plan to use Zoom with breakout rooms to host the tournament. Participants will first join the main Zoom using the link provided and then join the breakout room associated with your round listed on the pairing.
Please appropriately name yourself on Zoom to streamline checking rooms. The suggested naming format is LastName-School-Pronouns. If you are a team sharing a single device, please add both names to the name in Zoom (e.g. LastName1LastName2-School).

Families
The Spartan Classic will be continuing our effort to have our tournament be more “family friendly.” We will give any parents debates off to accommodate families with children. Just let us know how to best accommodate your schedule.

Thanks for considering the Spartan Classic Debate Tournament!

Entry Price

PF debate and parent is judging $60
PF debate and parent is OPTING OUT OF judging $200

Each person in a PF team would be responsible of providing their own judge, so one PF 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.

Tentative Schedule

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

Saturday, December 5th
8:15AM – Judges Meeting --- 5:15 AM PST
9:00AM – Round 1 --- 6:00 AM PST
10:15AM – Round 2 --- 7:15 AM PST
11:30AM – Round 3 --- 8:30 AM PST
12:30PM – Lunch --- 9:30 AM PST
1:15PM – Round 4 --- 10:15 AM PST
2:45PM – Round 5/Elim #1 --- 11:45 AM PST
4:30PM – Elim #1/ Elim #2 (if 4 Prelims) --- 1:30 PM PST
5:45PM - Elim #2 (if 5 prelims) --- 2:45 PM PST

Although the tentative schedule lists the start and end times, please keep in mind that there are various factors that may arise during a tournament that can cause rounds to be delayed. Therefore, if you are signing up for this tournament, please make sure you do not double book yourselves on these dates. Keep your schedule open and DO NOT leave the tournament without notifying the GSA chaperones first.

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 (make sure you have a Tabroom account) *

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

Partner Name *

First

Last

Choose your event *

MS PF HS Novice PF HS Open PF

JUDGE PROVISION
Another PF tournament has created these easy-to-use PF judging guidelines and powerpoint. Please take a look at both of them if this is your first time judging.
PF Judging Guidelines
PF Judging Slides

ATTENTION:
Any judge who arrives to a debate more than 15 minutes after the posted start time will incur a $50 fee.
Any judge who is a no-show will incur a $100 fee.

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

SPARTAN CLASSIC AT MSU​

5 December 2026

Information

​Entry Price

Tentative Schedule

Drop Fee

Contact Info

Registration Form

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

School year Hours

Telephone

Email (preferred)

Locations

SPARTAN CLASSIC AT MSU

Entry Price

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