Tournament Invitations

February 6-7, 2009
Betty Gunn Invitational
The 2009 Mountain Brook High School
Feb. 6-7, 2009
Birmingham AL – Home of the 2009 NFL National Tournament

Dear Colleagues:

You and your teams are cordially invited to the Betty Gunn Invitational sponsored by Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham , Alabama , on Feb. 6-7 2009. The Campus at Mountain Brook has been under renovation since our tournament last year. The building’s make-over is almost complete and I am very excited to announce that the Betty Gunn Invitational will be ready to accommodate our friends and colleagues for the tournament. In the spirit of renovation, I have decided to use this year as an opportunity to renew our tournament’s mission statement. Our hope is to provide the most competitive tournament in the State of Alabama . We firmly believe that by providing the best of hospitality and competition, our tournament will be successful in all other areas as well. With strength of competition and hospitality as our highest priority, we have made several changes to the tournament traditionally offered at Mountain Brook High School . I hope you will all join us this year for what I believe will be a fantastic competition.

The most significant alteration we have made concerns our Varsity tournament and the sweepstakes divisions. The traditional format has never allowed for the tournament to showcase the sweepstakes events on an equitable level for smaller and larger schools. Additionally, the Varsity divisions are relatively small and our format does not always accommodate the size constraint without collapsing divisions. This year, the sweepstakes will be the centerpiece of our tournament. In our Varsity divisions, we will invite all teams to enter a single non-cross-entered competitor who will compete under their school name. The remainder of the tournament will be an open tournament. These two divisions will compete on two tiers of sweepstakes points. The top four competitors in each division will earn points for their teams, but the Varsity division will be weighed on a fifty point scale and the open division on a ten point scale. The Varsity divisions will follow an appropriate round-robin style moving into podded round-robins as the number of entries allows. This year we will offer events in Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum, Congress, DI , HI , Prose, Poetry, Impromptu, Original Oratory, and DUO Interpretation.

Our second change concerns the hospitality. This year we have decided to cater all meals for our guests other than dinner on Saturday. The entry fees include the money needed for your students and judges to enjoy dinner Friday, & breakfast plus lunch Saturday without needing to purchase anything else. We will have some additional snack items and bottled waters available for purchase between meals, and in the end, we believe that this change will offer us the ability to significantly reduce your net costs for the weekend, and ours, while increasing the quality of food that our debaters will be offered over the weekend.

The webpage at www.joyoftournaments.com/al/mtnbrook has all information and registration details. The site includes rules, procedures, and a description of all our events and divisions. The deadline for entry will be earlier than normal due to our accommodations regarding the food. We ask for your help in early registration and to encourage it we have offered a $25 discount to all teams who enter by January 10th! Last day for registration will be January 30th at 3pm. All drops after the 30th will incur a $50 nuisance fee and any drops after the 5th of Feb. will incur a $100 nuisance fee. The hotels which are nearby are listed on our web page along with directions and I will be happy to assist you as needed with information regarding the airport and rental vehicles if needed. I would ask that you consider Hertz Rental cars first because Hertz has recently agreed to give back proceeds from all rentals to the NFL National tournament. Please specify that you are a debate team when renting and thank them for their support!

Lastly, I would appreciate each of you forwarding the invitation to anyone in your circle of friends who may not be on my mailing list. We are extremely excited to host you and the webpage is open now for full view of entries and information, please let me know if I can be of further assistance. Email is the best way to contact me: robertsj@mtnbrook.k12.al.us.

Last year, 2008 Champions
The Altamont School & 2008 Lincoln-Douglas Champion Kevin Sipe Vestavia Hills High School