Get Involved
Volunteer Opportunities
We rely on volunteers to help facilitate positive educational experiences for our students. This also saves the league hundreds of dollars which allows for more students to participate. There are many ways to volunteers at our tournaments, with opportunities from September to April of the school year.
Volunteers must be able to successfully pass a background check prior to their start date.
If you would prefer to make a monetary donation, please visit the donation page.
Tournament Judge
As a tournament judge you can directly facilitate the tournament experience for new debaters, whether or not you have prior debate or judging experience. If you can bring professionalism, positivity, and respect then you can be a great judge. Every volunteer judge allows for 4 more students to participate.
Judges watch the debate round, evaluate teams on logic, effective argumentation, and speaking skills. They pick a winner and assign speaking points to individual students and provide written and oral feedback on their decision. At a debate tournament, each debate round is approximately 1.5 hours with approximately 10 minutes between rounds. Each tournament will host a minimum of 3 rounds, but may expand to accommodate student entry.
The time commitment varies. We will work with you to be flexible with your schedule, as you are doing a great service for the students in our program. Each new judge volunteer will be trained (approximately two hours) in advance of a tournament. You will learn about the norms of high school debate, including debate evaluation, the style of the activity, and how to make effective and informed decisions.