Welcome to the home page for the 2019 L.A. County Orator's Cup, 6th Annual 3rd-12th Grd Spring Urban Forensics Fundraiser tournament hosted by Pacoima Charter Pre K-6th, 11016 Norris Ave, 91331 on Jun 2, 2019 for Various students.

Status: Tournament Completed

[The text below will be updated from time to time and a date and time stamp will be placed before any updated paragraph.]

Velásquez Academy hosts OC6 @Pacoima Charter!

[06/26/19 - 2:00PM]

The link for the scanned ballots posted on 6/14 was expanded to include the rankings PDFs for every event (this differs from the postings results in that round by round scores are not shown, but it's clear to see what the rankings were in descending order from first to last, beyond just the award winners).

[06/14/19 - 9:15AM]

Thanks to Nova 42, the scanned ballots for Patterns A, B & C are now accessible! Here's my Google Drive link to download the folder!

2019 OC6 Ballots & Event Rankings

[06/01/19 - 10PM]

Postings (room assignments for each student & judge) for all first rounds in all patterns (A at 8am, B around 11:30, C around 4pm) are up at  www.forensicstournament.net/orcup/19/postings

Only events with 29+ entries will have finals, which means these seven: ES Storytelling, MS Congress, ES & MS Impromptu and ES & MS & HS SpAr

Congress Rounds will use the Resolutions in the order listed below, so only MS Congress Final Round will deal with the Green New Deal.  We will seek to post Congress Finalists ASAP so they may know if they have a round later tonight.

[05/24/19 - 3:20 PM]
Welcome to the 6th Annual Orator's Cup 3rd-12th Grade Fundraising Tournament, hereinafter referred to as OC6. We will again be offering divisions for elementary, middle & high school competitors, though we may have some divisions compete together if entries are too few. There are no school fees, and the costs for each event is $15 (including Duo), not including the $15 fine per "uncovered " event slot when a team does not maintain a ratio of one judge for every 4 events registered (judges must be juniors in high school or older). Entries & fees are due at 3:30 PM on Mon May 27th (via Zelle online payment to velasquezacademy@gmail.com), so as to allow the purchase of the costly & pretty trophies which we have come to be known for. Failure to pay by the 27th  will result either in dropping of all students or the assignment of a fee for every late entry. WE WILL NOT BE REGISTERING NOR ACCEPTING PAYMENTS ON THE DAY OF THE CONTEST, so teams new to our contest need to understand that our payment timeline is a prepay situation, similar to the invitationals run at Stanford, Harvard, TOC or Nationals.

Note that entrance to the campus on Sunday will NOT be via the front on Norris but rather through the Reunion Gate entrance on Herrick. School WiFi will NOT be made available to students nor the general public, but some areas on campus seem to receive WiFi via Spectrum Time Warner Cable accounts. When using bathrooms on campus be sure to look for and respect which are for children and which are for adults.

We reserve the right to close events with entry thresholds too low or to move events to other patterns as dictated by entry numbers, and number of judges and rooms available, so Cup Candidates need to plan to be on campus all day, for changes may be announced while you're away. Nevertheless, if a student was Cup eligible with events from each Pattern, a move by the tournament to free up room space will NOT harm the student's Cup eligibility/candidacy (even if the moved event appears to no longer leave the student with an event in each pattern.)

Please also keep in mind that video and audio recording is PERMITTED for (educational and non-commercial uses only, we reserve the right to require that an abusive upload of a recording from OC be taken down) for all rounds, so your team's entry by your designee constitutes group acceptance and acknowledgement of your permission to be filmed (do NOT register a student if filming is opposed by that student's parents). We will close events (and reimburse fees if already paid) if entries are below three or four, so please register early if you have interest in keeping afloat an event which might not survive the "three entry minimum." Students may double-enter in any pattern, but they alone are responsible for alerting judges of being late. The tournament will not be responsible for complications arising from having entered in too many events in a single pattern, leading to tardiness or the inability to fully participate. If you enter SpAr, do that event first, then go on to your other events. If entering Congress, do your other event FIRST, then go on to do Congress.


Rules: High School events will generally follow NSDA rules (with the exception of Congress, which cannot be allowed to run three hours per prelim), unless they only exist in CA, at which point we turn to CHSSA rules. Middle School events will follow NSDA rules (with the exception of Congress length again). Elementary School events rules will follow the invite rules. We will generally allow a 5-10 minute time limit, except for certain events: ES Storytelling will be 5 minutes maximum, with a grace period of 30 seconds. ES & MS Impromptu will use a running time of 7 minutes (student may choose to start speaking at any time during the 7 minutes) with a single, blank index card allowed and no referencing to pre-written materials during the prep period. HS Impromptu is the same but loses access to the index card when speaking. SpAr will be 1 min prep, 1 min 1st Aff, 1 min 1st Neg, 3 min mutual Q&A, 1 min Neg Summary, 1 min Aff Summary. Congress will have four resolutions, one for each prelim and a Final, if necessary. The event Original Comic Commentary is analogous to the college event Speech To Entertain or After Dinner Speaking, albeit with a shorter time limit and no props. Interp with Binder (7 min) combines allows those with Prose, Poetry or POI pieces to compete despite their event not being offered in name at this contest. Actuación (5 min) is basically Interp for Spanish Speakers, designed to allow those who are recent immigrants to compete despite not yet having the mastery to compete in English. The selection can be original or from a published source, with power of impact and message being the overriding criterion for the Spanish speaking judge.

[5/15/19 4:55PM] The time limit in the combined Prose and POI event for High School division has been extended to 10 minutes to accommodate the greater number of POI entries at the high school level.

[05/23/19 - 10:05PM] The rules for Spontaneous Duo are as follows:
Students will be given three prompts--one humorous prompt, one dramatic prompt, and one prompt that invites them to parody a well-known film/book/TV show. They will prepare in pairs without consulting any other people, the internet, or pre-made notes for two minutes. After their two minutes of preparation time, they can present an improvised DUO performance for up to five minutes. The judge will give them time signals as they perform. The competitors may not use props, touch each other, or look at each other in the eyes during the performance (except if they choose to insert an introduction, where they break character and introduce the theme/title of the piece; in that instance, they may touch and look at each other in the eyes, but still may not use props). The competitors should be evaluated on their creative choices, acting ability, and topicality.

[Updated 5/30/19 - 5AM]

Due to only having 42 rooms available, Pattern B will be the only one bursting at the seams. In order to not have to hold MS and/or ES Spanish Interp and/or HS OPP during the later Pattern C, we will use ten students (5 debates) per SpAr room, have one HS Imp panel with 8 speakers and hold both Spanish interns in one room with one judge overseeing all 13 of them.


Impromptu will use a running time bank of 7 minutes but it will NOT require students to wait outside while a student speaks. We will not be using speaker points on the ballots and will scan the ballots for upload and review after the tournament.


Of the three Congress divisions, only MS Congress will have a final round, so only they must prepare for the  “Green New Deal” resolution. Besides MS Congress, it appears the other five events which will have a Final Round will be ES & MS SpAr, ES & MS Impromptu and ES Storytelling, as those are the six events with 30 or more entries.


2019 Congress Resolutions (not necessarily in order)

1) "Willful disobedience" suspensions should not begin until the 9th Grade

2) School Districts should divert funding for construction and repairs  to prevent verifiably ill teachers from having to pay for their own substitute teachers after their tenth sick day of the year.

3) State prisons should pay prisoners minimum wage for work they perform and furnish it to them via credit card upon their release. Prisoners who will never be released can choose whom the funds should be delivered to.

4) The US Federal Government should implement the Green New Deal as soon as possible.


[05/30/19 - 5:00AM]
We anticipate one to two food trucks (including Primetime Cuisine: Prime-Time-Cuisine Yelp Page)  will be selling food on campus to enable students to compete in consecutive patterns without leaving campus. NO food nor drinks are to be taken inside the classrooms!! NO students should ever be in a classroom without the JUDGE present and room furniture must be restored to the way it was found at the end of each round. Any evidence of student vandalism or abuse of the rooms will result in disqualification. For those teams whose students did not reach a Final Round, we STILL require your judges to stay for Finals! We reserve the right to withhold awards from teams whose judges are not around for Finals or miss more than one judging assignment. Finally, due to expecting so many entries, we have moved up the threshold for events to have a Final Round to only those events with 40 entries or more. If judges start dwindling, we will adjust that number higher, in order to ensure three judges per Final. $4,000 in trophies and medals are awarded (with the most being given to elementary division and the fewest to the high school division), and food/snacks/water will be provided throughout the day for the judges. Everyone is reminded that filming in rounds is a condition of registration and that parent resistance to this (which has happened on one or two occasions every single year) may negatively affect their child's score in that round or future rounds.  Judging ballots will be scanned, uploaded and made available several days after the contest, via a link to be posted on this web site. Awards not picked up will NOT be mailed out, but can be arranged to be picked up within two weeks of June 2nd.


[05/20/19 - 04:30PM]
Orator's Cup Top Speaker Award
: each division will feature one winner of the prestigious (and heavy) Orator's Cup (see examples in picture links below). In order to vie for the award, one must enter at least one event per Pattern plus enter "Cup Candidate" in "Pattern D". We will calculate the points from your top event in each of the three patterns. Since OC Finalists will also win trophies, it is theoretically conceivable to take home seven trophies if excelling in 6 events and placing highly for the Orators' Cup. Points for determining OC Top Speakers will follow this formula (in the best event per pattern fo each candidate): 1st Place: 5 points, 2nd Place: 4 points, 3rd Place: 3 points, 4th Place: 2 points, 5th or 6th Place: 1 point. Students will earn 50% more points if their event had a Final Round (e.g. 7.5 points for 1st Place, 6 points for 2nd, 4.5 points for 3rd etc...). The 50% bonus will additionally be earned from students from a younger division placing against students from an older division. For example, an MS or ES student placing in a mixed event with older students which also was large enough to require a Finals Round could conceivably earn 10 points for 1st Place, 8 points for 2nd and 6 points for 3rd etc...

The winners of the Best Overall Speaker's Cup to this point have been:

Elementary School Division (Year, Name, Team):

2018 Max Ma (Nova 42 Academy)
2017 Elizabeth Vassantachart (Velasquez Academy)
2016 Kana Park (Perfect Score Academy)
2015 Priya Agarwal (Nova 42 Academy)
2014 Aidan Chavez (Nova 42 Academy)


Middle School Division (Year, Name, Team):

2018 Kana Park (Perfect Score Academy)
2017 River Simard (iLEAD)
2016 Cara Wilson (Nova 42 Academy)
2015 Rachel Kho (Velasquez Academy)
2014 Aidan Shev (New West Charter)


High School Division (Year, Name, Team):

2018 A.J. Moore (iLEAD )
2017 A.J. Moore (iLEAD )
2016 Kate Farwell (iLEAD North Hollywood)
2015 Chad Gasman (V.I.P. North Hollywood)
2014 Jane Irons (Marlborough High School)


 

[5/18/19 - 03:20PM]
OC6  Schedule - Sunday, June 2nd, 2019 [tentative! if we can move times up, we will, don't leave campus!]

07:30 - 07:45   Judge Orientation
07:45 - 07:55   Round 1 Judging Assignments
08:00 - 09:00   Round 1 - Pattern A (Cong, Expos, OO, OCC)
09:05 – 10:05  Round 2 - Pattern A
10:10 - 11:10   Round 3 - Pattern A

11:15 - 11:25    Round 2 Judging Assignments
11:30 - 12:30   Round 1 - Pattern B (Imp, SpAr, OrigProse, Actuación)
12:35 – 01:35  Round 2 -
Pattern B 
01:40 - 02:40   Round 3 - Pattern B

02:45 - 02:55    Round 3 Judging Assignments
03:00 - 04:00   Round 1 - Pattern C  (DI, HI, Story, Duo, Dec, Binder Interp)
04:05 - 05:05   Round 2 - Pattern C

05:10 - 06:10   Round 3 - Pattern C
06:30 - 06:40  Final Round Judging Assignments
06:45 - 07:45   Finals - all events with 2x+ entries (all Patterns)
08:00 - 09:00   Awards in Auditorium (elementary first, middle school second, etc...)

 

 

About Orator's Cup: for six years now, the core duo of Ricardo Velasquez & Iain Lampert, in conjunction with visionary staff & administrators at host schools, has proudly brought to the SoCal speech community an imaginative & historic contest, the first to offer: on time rounds & award ceremonies, knowledge of your rooms & room competitors the day before the tournament, multiple judges (even in prelims when numbers allow), the local commute and free participation of students from underserved elementary schools in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, the mass permission for parents and siblings to film any and all rounds for the purposes of memory-keeping and future trainings, the prettiest & costliest trophies for a non-nationals/state level contest (including the black marble Orator's Cup for each division, whereon the name of each year's winner is affixed and the award is announced in his/her own name the following year) and the historic first of hosting all three grade divisions (ES, MS & HS) at one site on one day. We thank you for your interest and the honor of your talent & funding to help us find and promote speech & debate prodigies in the severely underserved communities of the Northeast San Fernando Valley. Only through such affirmative outreach and funding can the world of competitive speech lurch towards the key inclusion of minority students from public schools in non-affluent areas.



2018 Orator's Cup (Top Overall Speaker) final standings:

2018 High School Top 6

  1. 17.5 iLEAD Schools - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - AJ Moore
  2. 17.5 Nova 42 Academy - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - Daniel Kyle
  3. 13.0 iLEAD Schools - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - Sienna Horvath
  4. 10.0 iLEAD Schools - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - Gabe Grodan
  5. 8.+ iLEAD Schools - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - Daniel Timor
  6. 9.0 Nova 42 Academy - Grd 9-12 O. Cup Candidate - Dexter Winn

2018 Middle School Top 10

  1. 18.5 Perfect Score Academy - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Kana Park
  2. 17.5 Nova 42 Academy - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Andrew Li
  3. 17.5+ Rosemont Speech and Debate - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Richard Li
  4. 16.5 Wilshire Academy - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Christine Lee
  5. 16.0 iLEAD Schools - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - River Simard
  6. 15.0  iLEAD Schools - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Dev Wernik
  7. 13.0 ModernBrain - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Stephanie Hu
  8. 12.5 iLEAD Schools - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Bella Jahrmarkt
  9. 08.0 Walter Reed Middle School - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Alex Lee
  10. 08.0 Perfect Score Academy - Grd 6-8 O. Cup Candidate - Oscar Lam

2018 Elementary School Top 10

  1. 19.5 - Nova 42 Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Max Ma
  2. 17.5 - Wilshire Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Andrew Lee
  3. 14.5 - Perfect Score Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Ellie Sohn
  4. 13.5 - Perfect Score Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Elizabeth Ahn
  5. 12.5 - ModernBrain - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Anish Chowdhury
  6. 11.0 - Wilshire Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Howard Choi
  7. 12.0 - QD Learning - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Helen Liao
  8. 09.0 - QD Learning - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Eleanor Murphy
  9. 08.0 - Rosemont Speech and Debate - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Edmunda Li
  10. 08.0 - Nova 42 Academy - Grd 3-5 O. Cup Candidate - Nicholas Lee