The 2023 Fall Coaches meeting was held (virtually) on August 24th.  See the Meeting minutes here.

The 2023 Spring Coaches meeting was held (virtually) on June 22nd.  See the Meeting minutes here.

The 2022 Fall Coaches meeting was held (virtually) on August 24th.  See the Meeting minutes here.

The Fall Coach’s meeting was held virtually on Zoom on August 24th.  See the meeting minutes here!

The Spring Coach’s meeting was held virtually on Zoom on June 10.  See the meeting minutes here!

It’s a whole different world, participating in speech events virtually!  To prepare for the experience, download the new Virtual Speech Manual!  This manual provides helpful information for both participants and judges.  https://mdspeechanddebate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/VIRTUAL-SPEECH-MANUAL-2020-Oct-2020.pdf

The Fall Coach’s meeting was held virtually on Zoom on August 25.  See the meeting minutes here!

The 2020 Fall Coach’s meeting was held on June 23, (virtually, via Zoom).  See the meeting minutes here!

The next BCFL Coach meeting will be on June 23^rd at 6 PM. This will be in a virtual setting as we cannot yet expect to be able to meet in person. An agenda will be sent before the meeting, but here is a list of agenda items:

• Elections will be held for the following Director positions: Student Congress, Policy and Speech. Current officers will continue their duties and newly elected officers will begin in the fall as per our August 2019 meeting.
• We will set a tentative tournament calendar.  Please consider hosting a tournament at your school.
• We will discuss the possibility of running a virtual tournament should restrictions still be in place in the fall. Please contact the Diocesan Director at [email protected] if you are a coach who has experienced a virtual tournament and you are willing to serve on this committee.
• If you would like to submit a proposal for discussion at this meeting, please submit it to the Diocesan Director at [email protected] by May 23^rd so that it can included in the agenda and can be distributed for consideration before June 23^rd.

If your school has Public Forum debaters, you may have heard that the NCFL will be changing the lengths of the summary speeches and prep time to 3 minutes. Currently these are all 2 minutes.

Since the NCFL rules change for PF does not take effect until May, we have decided that the BCFL will implement the rules change as of January 1, 2020 to give our teams a chance to compete with the new format.  Until then, we will continue to use 2 minute final focus and summary and 2 minutes prep time.