Two Online Registration Systems Vie for USA Tournament Market

There are two. One mainly serves a high school market and the other mainly a college market. Both systems feature online invitations and tournament registration. Their other services vary quite a bit.

The service mostly targeting a high school audience is Joy of Tournaments, which can be found at http://www.joyoftournaments.com/index.asp

Joy of Tournaments is described as

"a comprehensive software package for managing speech tournaments including Debate, Individual Events, Congress, Rooms, Judges, Fees, Results, Sweepstakes, Tabulation, and much more. Schools can sign up for your tournament directly on this website. Tabroom Software, a Windows application that revolutionizes tab room operation."

Some FAQs:

What size of tournament does the software support?
The software has no limits (other than available memory) on the number of entries or events in a tournament. The minimum recommended hardware is a Pentium 500 with 32MB RAM. The larger the tournament, the faster you'll want the machine to be.
How many tournaments have used this software?
The software has been used by over 1500 tournaments in 36 states since its inception in 1983. Last season (2005-06), saw over 400 tournaments use either the website registration and/or tabulation software.
Where did the name "The Joy of Tournaments" come from?
My high school speech coach was Joy Morton. She's had a tremendous influence over the development of this software and was the first coach to give me a shot at using the software. Until her retirement in 2004, she hosted a tournament named the Bobsled Classic in January of each year. In 2005 I assisted with the 23rd Bobsled Classic to use the software (and a first with a new host). We've come a long way together. The software is named in her honor. Thanks Morton!

Information about the tab software can be found at
http://www.joyoftournaments.com/faq-tab.htm

There is a charge but it seems like they provide a lot of services, and you can even purchase emergency support during your event. For more information"
The Joy of Tournaments
PMB 144
4100 W. Eldorado Parkway, Suite 100
McKinney, TX 75070
(806) 773-0162
(617) 507-8574 (fax)

The second service is debateresults.com, which takes you to
http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/web/

This service deals mostly with college programs and mostly with policy debate. You can use online invitations and online registration, but they also offer online judge preference ranking. While they do not provide software for the tab room, they do download all information into the two most popular tab packages for colleges, TRPC (Tab Room for PC) and STA (Smart Tournament Administrator). They also keep archives of all college policy debate results, sweepstakes rankings, and participation levels. Any college policy debater can easily find their entire record for the year. The old drudgery of putting together at-large bid applications for the National Debate Tournament has now been replaced with simple push-button ease to file your application for a bid.

Quick overview: This page is designed to provide a central location to find a tournament calendar, enter tournaments on-line including judge preference information, and maintain a current list of tournament entries. For college policy debate, this site will store all tournament results information from results sheets and report NDT and CEDA points to a searchable database where you can find the results of an individual team or speaker. If you are new to the page, (a) either log in or follow the link for "Set up a new account for your school," (b) click on "Enter the names of judges and competitors" and enter the names of people at your school, and (c) click on the calendar to see invites, post entries, etc.

There are fees, but they seem fairly low.

INFORMATION ON COST AND USE OF THE ON-LINE ENTRY SYSTEM
This on-line system is designed to manage high school policy, college policy, parliamentary, and individual events tournaments. It also is a way to standardize college debate information for ranking reports, and is now available to all forensics communities for a very competitive rate.
It is easy to cross-reference the tournaments. If you require payment in advance, you can manage fees on-line.
ALL PROCEEDS ARE USED TO SUPPORT THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA URBAN DEBATE LEAGUE , a program designed to create competitive speech and debate opportunities for high schools that could not otherwise afford it.
The system is free to AFA and CEDA subscribers running policy tournaments. This is my service to the community. However, if you're guessing that this requires and incredible amount of time, work, and expertise to maintain, you're right. If your tournament proceeds allow it, a $50 donation to the SCUDL is suggested.
Support is included at no charge in the fees. However, you should recognize that I am an active debate coach and travel quite frequently. I will make a concerted effort to respond to all reasonable requests in a way that is cognizant of the time-sensitive needs of users.

You can contact them at: Dr. Jon Bruschke
Dept. of Human Communication Studies
California State University, Fullerton
PO Box 6868
Fullerton, CA 92834