The 2025 SCJFL Middle and Elementary

Southern California Championship Tournament

East Los Angeles College

May 3rd-4th, 2025

(Invitation Version 1.0)

SCJFL is proud to announce The 2024 SCJFL Middle School Southern California Championship Tournament.  This tournament is meant to encourage a healthy competition and provide an opportunity to sharpen competitive speeches before the national tournament.  

The tournament will be held on Saturday May 3rd and Sunday, May 4th, 2024.

***Please note that, if the schedule condenses, we may move everything to Saturday, May 3rd.***

The tournament will be held at East Los Angeles College.

Address:

1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez

Monterey Park, CA 91754

Eligibility:

All competitors who advanced into an open division final round or received a placement award (speaker awards for debate are not eligible) at an SCJFL middle school tournament are eligible.  The tournament will accept as many wishlist requests until the slots for an event are full.

Available slots:

Each event will have a specific number of slots offered for the tournament.  If a competitor has qualified (received an award by either advancing to an elimination round or by placing in the top half of an event that did not have a final round), then the competitor is guaranteed a slot, even if the offered amount of slots has been met.

For example, if a student received a 5th place trophy in Poetry at the Q3 speech tournament, then he qualifies to compete in SoCal Champs, regardless of how many other people would like to attend.  The tournament will offer six slots for Poetry (see below).  So, the student would be allowed to compete in Poetry, even if more than six other qualified students also signed up.  The tournament will admit all competitors who qualify.

However, since Champs only offers six slots, if only four qualified students sign up for the event, then the tournament would accept two more students who are non-qualified.  These students would need to sign up on a ‘wishlist.’  The tournament staff will select wishlist students based on how well they placed in the event at a previous tournament.  When signing up a student on the wishlist, it is important to note which tournament the student score best.  Only one tournament will be considered per wishlist event, so please double-check to ensure that you are selecting the best tournament for the student.

If you have any questions about this process, please feel free to contact the tournament director through the registration page.

Middle School Event Slots Offered:

Elementary School Event Slots Offered:

Impromptu, SPAR, Storytelling, Informative, Duo, Declamation, Prose, Poetry, Persuasive, Assigned Platform = 18 slots offered.

Topics:

Lincoln-Douglas Debate – 2025 March/April Topic

Resolved: The development of Artificial General Intelligence is immoral.

Public Forum Debate – 2025 April Topic

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in domestic nuclear energy.

Entries:

Qualification: Upon registration, coaches should indicate which tournament qualified the competitor.  This is available under the REGISTER -> COMPETITOR REQUESTS tab on the tournament registration page (next to the COMPETITOR WAIVER tab).  Coaches should write the event(s) and the  respective qualifying tournament in the space next to the student’s name (e.g. Michelle Smith - Extemp - Q4; Storytelling - Q2).  Students who are entered without qualifications will be dropped and not granted entry from the wishlist

Wilshlist: Students who did not qualify, but who wish to be waitlisted for an event can sign up on the following Google Form.  The tournament staff will admit the highest ranked waitlisted students until all of the slots are filled for that event.

Link to sign up students for the wishlist (each student will require a new submission to the form): 

https://forms.gle/jBPCqHQmrjZSvJodA

NOTE: Students who are entered as qualified students but have not qualified will be dropped from the tournament and not considered on the waitlist.  Please double-check the results of previous tournaments to ensure that your students are entered correctly.

Saturday:

9:00 a.m. Round 1 Pattern B (Pro, HI, Per, Duo, STE, Imp, SPAR)

10:30 a.m. Round 2 Pattern B (Pro, HI, Per, Duo, STE, Imp, SPAR)

12:00 p.m. Round 1 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD) / Pattern D (Cong)

1:00 p.m. Lunch break

1:30 p.m. Round 3 Pattern B (Pro, HI, Per, Duo, STE, Imp, SPAR)

3:00 p.m. Round 2 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD) / Pattern D (Cong)

4:30 p.m. Finals Pattern B

6:00 p.m. Round 3 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD) / Pattern D (Cong)

Sunday:

9:30 a.m. Round 1 Pattern C (DI, Dec, Poe, Sty, Info, AP, SR/CR, Ext) / Round 4 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD)

10:45 a.m. Round 2 Pattern C (DI, Dec, Poe, Sty, Info, AP, SR/CR, Ext) /Round 5 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD)

12:15 p.m. Round 3 Pattern C (DI, Dec, Poe, Sty, Info, AP, SR/CR, Ext)/Elim 1 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD)

1:30 p.m. Finals Pattern C /Elim 2 Pattern A (PF, BQ, LD)

ASAP - Awards

______________________________________________________________________

Elementary School Schedule*:

Saturday: 

9:00 a.m. Round 1 Pattern F (SPAR)

10:30 a.m. Round 2 Pattern F (SPAR)

12:00 p.m. Round 1 Pattern G (Sty, Per, Info, Poe, Pro, Duo, Imp, Dec, AP)

1:00 p.m. Lunch break

1:30 p.m. Round 3 Pattern F (SPAR)

3:00 p.m. Round 2 Pattern G (Sty, Per, Info, Poe, Pro,Duo, Imp, Dec, AP

4:30 p.m. Round 3 Pattern G (Sty, Per, Info, Poe, Pro, Duo, Imp, Dec, AP) / Finals Pattern F (SPAR)

6:00 p.m. Finals Pattern G 

Judges:

We have tried to schedule the tournament such that middle school students (7th grade and older) can judge the elementary events, if they wish.  Middle school students who wish to both compete and judge should be careful not to register as a judge for a time in which they have a competition round.  Schools which register such students will be subject to a judge no-show fee and potentially a delay of tournament fee.  These students should also be careful not to exhaust themselves by not taking a break between rounds.

Ballots will be issued to judges a few minutes before the start time of the round. 

Judges are encouraged to submit the decisions (ranks) of the round and then add any additional feedback for the students after the decision has been recorded. This helps the tournament stay on time; we frequently are waiting on one single ballot before we can calculate the next round, so submitting a decision quickly moves the tournament along.

Deadlines:

Entry deadline for qualified students is Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. noon Pacific.  The tournament staff will then assess the number of qualified entries and determine the number of additional wishlist requests that can be accepted.  

The tournament staff will add wishlist students to the tournament and then notify the coaches to check the updated registration summary to verify that the entries look correct.

Fees:

Fees will be assessed on Tuesday April 29th at 12:00 p.m. PST.  Any changes after this date will be subject to the following penalties. 

Late changes - $25

Competitor no-show - $35 (event fees will not be refunded after deadline).

Please pay all fees to an account below by Wednesday, April 30th, 2025 at noon Pacific. Fees must be paid through the registration page by clicking on the ‘Tournament Fees’ tab on the left side of the page.  All fees will be frozen at the time of registration close.

$50 school fee

$25 per IE/Congress/Spar event-entry ($40 per Duo team)

$45 per one-person debate entry

$60 per two-person debate entry

$75 per World Schools entry

$40 judging fee per uncovered IE event-entry (One judge covers 5 IE event-entries)

$125 per uncovered debate event-entry (One judge covers 2 LD/PD/PFD event-entries)

$200 dropped judge fee (per day) if dropped within 24 hours of the tournament.

$25 No-show judge ballot fee (first offense); $50 No-show judge fee (second and subsequent offenses)

Judges who do not write sufficient feedback to the competitors will be fined $10 per round.  Unsatisfactory ballots will be determined by the tabulation staff.

The tournament reserves the right to deny schools who do not supply at least half of their required judges.  We will do our best to ensure that no schools are denied because of this reason.

Tournament Staff:

Tournament director: Robert Cannon