The New Year Swing: Cougar Classic & Dobie Tournaments

2nd Annual, January 8 - 9 2016

at the University of Houston & Dobie High School (Individual Events)

On behalf of the Speech and Debate Program, the Honors College, the University of Houston and Dobie Speech & Debate, we would like to invite you to the New Year Swing & Cougar Debate Classic, which will be held on January 8 & 9, 2016 on the main UH campus. The tournament is a TOC semifinal bid in Policy & LD and will be a TFA qualifier in all TFA events.

All Debate CX, LD, PF & CD plus extemp will be on the UH campus. Registration is available at www.cougar.tabroom.com

All IE's, except extemp, will be at Dobie High School. Please register at www.joyoftournaments.com/tx/newyrswing

We are excited to host this tournament to not only showcase our campus and team, but to also demonstrate our commitment to debate in Houston, the state of Texas and the region. In designing this tournament, we have partnered with Dobie High School and others to create a collaborative and mutually supportive partnership between our collegiate program and the high school debate community. I'd like to highlight a few feature of the tournaments: 

Two full tournaments
Students will have, during the course of the weekend, the ability to compete in both the UH and Dobie portions of the swing. This will maximize the breadth of events offered and the rounds available to students. In debate events, students who do not reach the elimination rounds will have an entire extra day of competition available. Individual events will be held at the nearby Dobie campus and we will have a shuttle between the tournaments for coaches who need to move between locations.

Hospitality
We are committed to providing an enjoyable and sustainable tournament experience for all participants. We have worked closely with our schedule to ensure that students and coaches will feel at home and focus their energy on debate and competition. In striving to provide first-class hospitality to our guests, we intend to provide several amenities to competitors, coaches, and judges:

Food: The tournament will provide Breakfast and Lunch on Friday & Saturday and a Pizza Dinner on Friday. There will be abundant coffee at all times. A well-appointed judge’s lounge will be available for coaches and judges. 

Facilities: After completing nearly a billion dollars of construction in the last few years, the UH campus will be turned over in near entirety to the Cougar Classic. Each division will be located in a particular “neighborhood” of campus, clusters of closely and conveniently located buildings, eliminating the need for major room moves or hikes across campus for competitors and judges. Each of the neighborhoods is only a short walk from the coaches’ and judges’ lounge in the Honors College. Ample free parking is available. And the campus is easily accessible from the Metro light rail line to campus.

Internet: UH has a robust guest network that should easily handle any Internet access needs for tournament guests. 

High-quality Judging
We will have the highest quality judge pool that we can gather. Our choice of hosting during the holiday break is intentionally oriented towards this goal, because it will allow us to recruit experienced judges and coaches who are at other times too busy to attend. 

Not-for-profit
This tournament will not be used as a profit-generating enterprise for the UH Speech & Debate program. Any profits accrued from the tournament will support non-profit debate institutions. This will allow us to devote our efforts towards providing a service for the community.

High-quality, Accessible Competition

Our goal in (re)building this tournament is to create access to the most educational and challenging competition for students. We believe that these competitive spaces can be rigorous without being exclusive. The value of access motivates our commitment to hospitality, collaborative planning and the unique blend of TOC, TFA and UDL circuits in this tournament.

See you in January,

Sarah Spring
Director of Speech & Debate
Honors College
University of Houston
713-743-5707
sespring@uh.edu
@HoustonDebate

Andrew George Barrett & John Augillard
Dobie High School Speech & Debate
abarrett@pasadenaisd.org
281-414-9221