For the third year in a row, I ended up spending a Saturday judging a forensics tournament at Altoona-Midway. The kids give oral performances in a variety of formats including duets, improvisation, informative speech and impromptu. Sometimes the kids pick a topic and sometimes they have to draw a topic at random. We judge their performance based on knowledge, speech quality, and poise. The performances vary from professional grade to truly cringe worthy.
There are three preliminary rounds, most of us judge two of the three preliminary rounds or one preliminary round and finals. There are four to six preliminary contestants in each round at small meets like this one and five to six in the finals. Competition is usually done by mid afternoon so I still got some sleep before work last night.
Footyfried 