January

NFL NEWLETTER

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Dear Coaches,

Happy New Year - it's 2003!  And Districts is just around the corner - March 14-15.  I will make this a short newsletter because the District tournament letter will be sent to you by the end of this month.  Bill Evans and I spent almost two hours today planning the tournament and revamping the invitation letter.  We are making a few changes which will be noted in the letter, but nothing drastic will change since NFL has set rules for most of the tournament.  Some of you will be asked to work in the tab room, but one piece of advice I have received is to keep the tab room streamlined in order to get more coaches in the judges pool.  Please begin now getting your judges obligated for that weekend.  We need quantity and quality in order to fill the 3-judge panels.

Welcome to the new coach at Greer High School.  Scott Moore, fresh out of college, has been hired by Greer High School to teach and to take on the forensic team there.  Scott is a graduate of Greer HS and competed under the coaching of Kim Bentley.  We are pleased to have him back, and congratulations on a great start at the Greenville HS tournament!

Speaking of Greenville's tournament, the first place results are posted on the SC website.  Go to "Tournament Results."  I hope that you are sharing this information with your team.  The website is for them, too.

Anyone who wants their tournament invitation posted on the website should send the invitation to the website email (Contact the Webmaster).  Please send the invitation as ONE Microsoft Word document.  I will get it put into Acrobat Reader so that it is printable.  My goal is that next year we will all be able to post our invitations on the website and save the mailing cost of tournaments - postage and paper.

January's Coach of the Month has been posted.  Congratulations to Ruth McAllister of Riverside.  I hope each of you will read the article posted on the Coaches Page about Ruth.  Please send me nominations for the February coach.

In November we put a counter on the website.  In two months the site has received over 750 hits.  I hope this means that this website is of great use to all of you.  Please keep sending me suggestions.

North Carolina has also joined the ranks of those of us who have websites.  Please visit their new site at www.ncspeechanddebate.org.  Congrats to Steve Davis on a good looking site!  By the way, the NC site and the SC site are linked to each other.

I am still concerned about judges!  Please make sure you are helping at tournaments by doing the following:

1.  Meet your judging requirements.

2.  Replace no-show judges before the tournament begins.

3.  Make sure your judges are "findable" at all times at tournaments.  Tournament directors waste much time at tournaments looking for "missing" judges.

4.  Don't allow your judges to sub for each other without first asking the tournament director.  Unauthorized substitutes cause problems for later rounds in which they are assigned.

5.  Ask your judges to stay for the entire time.

6.  Train your judges to judge all events - or at least all IE events and/or all debate events.  Remember that Ted Turner Debate is to be judged by IE judges.

Our judges are valuable people giving of their valuable time.  But our students need quality judges who are on time just as we expect our students to be.  Thanks for your help in this matter.

 If you need any help getting points recorded or preparing for Districts, feel free to call me at anytime.

Gail