The 23rd Annual California Round Robin

Dear Coaches:

It is with great pleasure that we invite your top debaters to participate in the College Preparatory School California Round Robin. This round robin competition is a very special event, designed to provide participants with a unique educational experience. This year's event will be held IN PERSON at the Walnut Creek Marriott (our previous site for several years).

Semi-finals will be held at College Prep. The final round will be hosted online in order to facilitate the participation of our expert critics (though the debaters will be able to debate on site at College Prep.

Due to COVID, we will not have an awards banquet, though we will provide lunch for competitors and judges Thursday. We will also have food for the judges and debaters in the final round.

We are inviting participants from top high school debate teams in the nation to be a part of this event, and we are pleased to include your debaters in this impressive group. You should be very proud of the accomplishments that your debaters have achieved already. Their success reflects well on their coaches, teachers, and entire school community. Teams should enter online if they have received and accepted an invitation by email. All teams entered will be wait listed until their entry is reviewed to ensure that they have been invited.

If your team is interested and has not received an invitation, please reach out to lexy@college-prep.org for consideration.

The California Round Robin will be held in conjunction with the California Invitational at the University of California at Berkeley (February 17-19, 2024). It takes place on February 15-16, 2024, immediately before the Berkeley tournament. Round Robin participants are expected to enter the Cal tournament.

This round robin competition is unique, in that it will use a panel of subject area experts to evaluate the final round. It will be a public debate intended for a wide audience (and it should be presentable to your school administration and parent community). We view this event as an opportunity for some of the nation’s top high school students to interact with some of the leading experts in the field of the debate topic. Due to the special nature of the final round, we require that all round robin participants attend the final debate round and post debate discussion. If your team will not attend the final round, we request that you not accept this invitation. Please note that we plan to livestream the final rounds in keeping with the public debate concept.

We are very excited about this event, and we look forward to hosting you and your students. Please let us know if you have further questions, and if there is anything we can do to help make your team’s participation possible.

Sincerely,

Lexy Green (’81)

Director of Debate

Ian Beier

Assistant Director of Debate