March 22, 2021

Dear PSCFA Community,

The 2020-2021 season is coming to a close. It has been far from a traditional year, but we have found new ways to continue to come together as a community and connect despite the challenges this new normal has presented. On behalf of PSCFA I would like to invite you and your teams to the 2021 Cool-Off tournament.

A unique aspect of the Cool-Off is that it is for novices and rookies only. This allows for students with little or no competition experience to compete with students of their level.

This is also a great opportunity for coaches to take a break and give junior and senior competitors a chance to be on the other side of the ballot and judge a few rounds. Those junior and senior students that do judge will not sacrifice any competitive eligibility for later seasons since this is a novice only event. Remember, all judges must be certified for PSCFA tournaments so please have them go to the PSCFA website, read the Forensics Related Educational Document (F.R.E.D.), and certify online https://pscfa.org/fred/ .

Key points:

• Registration is due Tuesday, April 27^th by 11:59pm PST on forensicstournament.net

• Each school is required to provide one judge for every 5 IE entries per pattern/2 debate teams. Uncovered entries will not be permitted. Please see HiredJudge.com if you need to arrange for judges.
• Because this is an online tournament, slow internet speeds can cause issues for speakers, judges, and tournament staff. Test your internet speed on SpeakEasy.net. Anything less than 6 mbps upload/download will cause video/audio problems.
  • We strongly recommend each school has judges on standby who are familiar with internet tournaments in case there are internet issues for their originally registered judges.
• The tournament will use synchronous video conferencing. Please direct your students and judges to the respective guides for online tournaments if they are new to online tournaments. Those guides can be found here https://forensicstournament.net/online
• We will offer four (4) rounds of Novice and Rookie NFA-LD, NPDA and IPDA debate on Saturday. Sunday will offer the usual two (2) rounds of all PSCFA individual events for Novice competitors.
• The awards ceremony will be live-streamed on YouTube.

We look forward to seeing you at The Cool-Off! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact

Angelica Grigsby, Tournament Director, Maricopa Community Colleges

Email: angelica.grigsby@gccaz.edu