The following is a slightly modified version of a letter sent to secondary schools across Hong Kong on the 27th of January, 2021. The original document has been attached to this post for reference.
Dear Debating Community of Hong Kong,
As part of our role in supporting secondary school debate in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Debate & Speech Community (HKDSC) will now be responsible for organizing the Junior and Senior SDC debate tournaments, which will continue to take place annually and be held exclusively for Hong Kong secondary students.
We are therefore delighted to announce that the inaugural Junior SDC under the HKDSC will take place online on the 10th & 11th of April, and will be convened by Mr. Stan Dyer and Angus Li. As in previous JSDCs, the tournament this year will be exclusively for students in Form 1-3/Year 7-10/Grade 6-9.
The format used will be a variant of WSDC – debates will be 3-on-3 with 6 minute speeches and 3 minute reply speeches. POIs are allowed and encouraged. Teams with more than 6 debaters will not be eligible to break, and debaters will have to speak for at least 3 rounds to be eligible for speaker awards. Physical trophies will be given to the Top 10 Speakers, as well as the Champion and Runner-Up teams in the Grand Final.
The total registration fee for each team will be $200. Payment details will be given after registration ends. HKDSC is a non-profit organization, and so this money will be used to make our operations sustainable and ensure the quality of the events we hold.
Additionally, in order to maintain a high standard of judging, we will require that schools provide 1 adjudicator per team. These can be either teachers or senior students, but at least 1 of the adjudicators provided must be an adult who can monitor the security of their school’s participants.
The deadline for registration through our form (forms.gle/Zc5ybbCRu6t9zyEJ6) is 28 February. The tournament schedule, as well as other details, can be found below:
| Draw: | Awards |
| Round 1 random, Rounds 2-4 power-paired. QF-GF will be folded using a knockout draw. | Top Ten Speaker Awards; Top 8 teams break to quarter-final. |
We are incredibly excited to keep the banner of SDC flying high, and hope to see as many debaters as possible in April. Thank you for your time!
Sincerely,
The HKDSC Tournament Committee