The middle tier of this year’s National Points Race is the biggest part of the ranking system, being composed of four tournaments. The first tournaments were selected based on their prestige as “major” events that take place during the first and second semester of the year, while the other two tournaments are tournaments that have fallen in their tier ranking from last year.
Category: National Points Race
Today, Extemp Central releases the names of tournaments that have been selected for the fourth tier of the 2009-2010 National Points Race. The criteria in selecting these three tournaments for this tier is that they had more participation or higher quality fields than tournaments in the fifth tier, but lacked the prestige and/or the extremely wide participation of tournaments in the third tier.
As was revealed yesterday, the 2009-2010 Extemp Central National Points Race will see some adjustments. The major adjustment is that there will be five tiers of tournaments as opposed to three. Extemp Central begins to release the tournaments that have been selected for this year’s points race today by detailing the three tournaments that will make up the fifth tier (lowest tier) of the points race.
In a little over 40 days, the 2009-2010 Extemp Central National Points Race 
will kick off. The points race, whose purpose it is to award the extemper who has achieved the best results at a collection of nationally recognized tournaments, will see some adjustments from last season. For example, this year tournaments will be organized into five tiers as opposed to three.
Over the next five days, Extemp Central will gradually release the names of tournaments that have been selected for the national points race, the tier that they will occupy, and the rationale for placing them in that tier. The tournaments that will make up the tournament’s fifth tier, the lowest tier on the national points race, will be released tomorrow.
To find out more details about this year’s points race, check out the first edition of this year’s Ex Files, set to be released at the end of August.
Finally, if you haven’t already, please join our group at Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The post below offers details for how to do that.
by Logan Scisco
Spreadsheet of Final Individual Standings
Spreadsheet of Final Team Standings
Now that the Birmingham NFL Nationals is complete, the Extemp National Points Race has concluded. This year’s individual points race was decided before the national tournament began when Dillon Huff and Matt Arons were not at the tournament, which handed the individual points championship to Stacey Chen of North Allegheny Senior High School in Pennsylvania. However, the team points race ended up tighter than expected, thanks to a late surge from Bellarmine College Prep in California.
The Extemp Central National Points Race covered a wide range of tournament this year, starting with the Wake Forest National Early Bird and concluding with the 2009 NFL National tournament. Next year, there will be some adjustments made to the national points race, so that bigger national circuit tournaments like Glenbrooks and Harvard receive more points than the Wake Forest National Early Bird, the University of Pennsylvania Liberty Bell Classic, and the California Invitational. These changes will be detailed in the first edition of next year’s Ex Files, which is set to be released a week before Wake Forest.
While the below descriptions of individual and team points race will only list the top fifteen and top ten, a full version of the standings will be made available on the Extemp Central site so that competitors and schools who did not crack the top fifteen can see where they finished.
by Logan Scisco
A PDF of the following article is available by clicking here.
The first year of the Extemp Central National Points Race has nearly concluded, with the International and United States extemp tournaments at the NFL National tournament in Birmingham, Alabama being the last tournament that has to be entered. This year has featured a collection of various winners from the extemp community, with Stacey Chen of North Allegheny Senior High School emerging as the dominant #1 in the rankings, holding that position for much of the year.
Since the last edition of The Ex Files, there has been a small shakeup in the top of the standings. The Extemp Tournament of Champions at Northwestern University featured many extempers in the national points race and added some clarity to the standings. The Catholic Forensic League (CFL) national tournament in Albany, New York had less “star power”, but did boost the fortunes of many trying to shore up a good finish for the end of the season.
As the last tournament of the year, the NFL national tournament is essentially “glory’s last shot” for extempers looking to finish their careers with either a national championship or a national finalist finish. It is the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work and preparation. Yet only two extempers will leave Birmingham with the opportunity to call themselves a national champion and only one extemper at the end of the tournament will be able to proclaim themselves as the winner of the first ever Extemp Central National Points Race.
by Logan Scisco
Although there have been no changes in the national points race from the last edition, the next two tournaments (the Extemp TOC and the CFL national tournament) will have a major impact on the standings. The trophy for both the individual and team standings is being searched for and ordered as we speak, and pictures of those will be released on the website when they become available.
Since the Extemp TOC is a “second tier” tournament, the points available for the Extemp TOC are as follows:
|
Ranking |
Points Received |
|
1st |
100 |
|
2nd |
85 |
|
3rd |
70 |
|
4th |
55 |
|
5th |
48 |
|
6th (not awarded for MBA) |
41 |
The CFL national tournament is a “first tier” tournament. The points available for the CFL national tournament are as follows:
|
Ranking |
Points Received |
|
1st |
50 |
|
2nd |
40 |
|
3rd |
30 |
|
4th |
20 |
|
5th |
16 |
|
6th |
12 |
Below is a snapshot of what the standings look like heading into this weekend’s Extemp TOC.
by Logan Scisco
The “invitational” portion of the national extemporaneous speaking season has finished for the 2008-2009 season and after the completion of one second tier tournament and three third tier tournaments the standings are still lead by Stacey Chen of North Allegheny Senior High School in Wexford, Pennsylvania. In fact, over the last three months, Chen has opened a bigger gap on her competition than she had at the end of December.
The most notable tournament to occur over the last three months was the Montgomery Bell Academy Extemp Round Robin in Nashville, Tennessee. Extemp Central provided live coverage for this event, and as many around the country now know, Matt Arons of Millburn High School in New Jersey won the tournament over Evan Larson of Bellarmine College Prep in California. Points leader Stacey Chen placed third at the competition. The Round Robin was notable because it is the first time that the fifth place finisher at the event, in this case Dillon Huff of Southlake Carroll High School in Texas, won the Exhibition Round at the end of the tournament.
However, the standings below are still subject to much change. The three tournaments that remain on the calendar, the Extemp TOC, CFL Nationals, and NFL Nationals, are worth two to three times the size of invitational tournaments and could do much to change the dynamic. The next edition of The Ex Files will be a TOC and CFL Nationals preview and will not include an extensive points race update. However, the NFL Nationals preview edition of The Ex Files will provide updated standings after those tournaments finish so that extempers know where they stand heading into the final tournament of the season.
by Logan Scisco
The first semester of the extemporaneous speaking season has come and gone with the conclusion of the prestigious Glenbrooks tournament in Illinois on November 23rd-24th and the George Mason University Patriot Games tournament on December 6th-8th in Fairfax, Virginia. These tournaments were both “third tier” tournaments, with the winner of each receiving 50 points towards the inaugural Extemp Question Central National Points Race standings.
It is worth noting that the George Mason University Extemp Round Robin, which features a very unique head-to-head format, and was won by Stacey Chen of North Allegheny Senior High School in Pennsylvania, does not count towards the standings. Instead, only the “open” portion of the tournament where all extempers could compete counts.
The George Mason University Patriot Games tournament, a tournament that grows in stature each year, had a final round that greatly impacted the standings with the third through sixth place finishers already established in the National Points Race. The Glenbrooks tournament also had the unique distinction of putting Nova High School in Florida on the map in the National Points Race team standings.
by Logan Scisco
There have been three tournaments counting towards the inaugural Extemp Question Central National Points Race since our October edition, one occurring at the University of Pennsylvania Liberty Bell Classic and the other at the St. Mark’s Heart of Texas Invitational, where both the United States and International extemp tournaments counted for points. To see a breakdown and basis for the Extemp Question Central National Points Race, please look at previous issues of The Ex Files that can be accessed on the Extemp Question Central website.
The University of Pennsylvania Liberty Bell Classic, held on October 18-19th, and the St. Mark’s Heart of Texas Invitational, held on October 16-19th, featured diverse fields of competition. The inclusion of these three additional tournaments into the rankings, which have already included the Wake Forest Early Bird and the Yale University Invitational, helped to break the tie that existed in the number one spot in the rankings in our last issue. To view the results of the Liberty Bell Classic and the St. Mark’s Heart of Texas Invitational, please look at the results section at the back of this magazine.
by Logan Scisco
In our last issue, we broke down the structure of this year’s Extemp Question Central National Points Race. Points are awarded to competitors based on their performance in three tiers of tournaments. The first tier is composed of the two major national tournaments, CFL and NFL Nationals, the second tier is composed of skill level national tournaments where extempers must qualify, such as the Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin and the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions, and the third tier is composed of ten pre-selected national circuit tournaments. At the end of the season, the individual extemper who accumulates the most points will be named the 2009 Extemp Question Central National Points Race Champion and will receive a trophy paid for by Extemp Question Central to commemorate their accomplishment. There is also a team rankings component built into the system, where teams can accumulate points based on how their extempers place in the final rounds of the three tiers of tournaments discussed above.
The question that has often lingered in the minds of extempers across the nation, especially those who travel the national circuit, has been the question of who the top extemporaneous speaker in the nation has been for that particular season. In some years, this question has easily been decided by a competitor who has won both the National Catholic Forensic League and National Forensic League national tournaments such as Kevin Troy’s pair of victories in 2005 and Akshar Rambachan’s victories last season. However, the result that has often occurred is that a collection extempers have won the nation’s top national tournaments and this split provokes the question of who is best.
Although such questions will continue throughout this season and on into ones in the future, Extemp Question Central has introduced the “Extemp Question Central National Points Race” to give extempers some type of way to rank themselves against their opponents. This points race will give points to competitors based on their performance at recognized national circuit tournaments, both national championship tournaments, and in tournaments that feature distinguished fields such as the Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin and the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions at Northwestern University in May. The purpose of the rankings may not exactly be to determine who the best extemper in the nation is, but it hopes to award consistent results by top extemporaneous speaking competitors across three different types of tournaments.
By the time the first issue of this magazine hits the Extemp Question Central website, the first major national circuit tournament of the year, the Wake Forest Early Bird will be nearing its conclusion. This means that the first listing of this year’s rankings, for the 2008-2009 season, will appear in the next issue. In each issue of The Ex-Files, this section of the magazine will feature updated points standings, all the way into the CFL and NFL National tournaments, and then giving a final recap with final standings that extemporaneous speaking competitors can look at across the country a week after the NFL National tournament concludes in Birmingham, Alabama in June.
It is Extemp Question Central’s hope that this ranking system will be monitored by the extemporaneous speaking community, and will attract more attention on extemporaneous speaking competitions around the country, especially at CFL and NFL Nationals.