This is the Tournament Portal for our 2025 Spring East Tournament which will be held at St Constantine Cyril the Philosopher Secondary School of European Languages in Ruse on February 22-23rd.
Registration
Registration opens on 21st January and closes on 4th February.
Host Site
The tournament will take place in St Constantine Cyril the Philosopher Secondary School of European Languages in Ruse.
Accommodations
BEST reserves up to two nights of accommodation for all participants. BEST commits to negotiating accommodation costs at or under 40 BGN per student per night. Participants have to pay for their own accommodation costs while BEST covers the costs of all judges for up to one night in a hotel and up to one chaperone.
Hotels
Judges and Team Coaches will receive emails with their hotel allocation for the weekend. Please refrain from communicating with the hotels directly and contact BEST instead if you have questions or concerns.
Travel
All teams are required to bring a chaperone who will be legally responsible for their team’s safety when traveling to and competing at the venue. Chaperones are required to be aged 18 or over and to be fluent in Bulgarian.
Teams are encouraged to apply for a travel scholarship. Coaches can fill out the scholarship application form by clicking here. Teams allocated scholarships will be reimbursed after arriving at the tournament venue. Please read our scholarship terms and conditions for further information BEFORE applying for a scholarship.
Press Releases
(EN) Pre-tournament Press Release
Tournament Schedule
Novice and Varsity divisions are merged for: Original Oratory, Duo, Prose and Poetry
Saturday, Feb 22, 2025
08:45 - Team Check-in
09:00 - Speech Judge Q+A // SL Meeting
10:00 - Opening Ceremony
11:00 - Round 1 Flight A: Oratory, Prose, and Duo
11:00 - Debate Judge Q+A
12:30 - Round 1 Flight B: Poetry and Debate (Prepared)
14:00 - Lunch
14:45 - Round 2 Flight A: Oratory, Prose, and Duo
15:30 - Reimbursement for Team Scholarships and Travel Chaperones (1 hour)
16:00 - Round 2 Flight B: Poetry and Impromptu Debate Motion Released (45 min. of prep)
16:45 - Round 2 Debate start time
18:15 - Round 3: Duo
Quarterfinals: Prose
Semifinals: Original Oratory
19:30 - Round 3: Debate (Prepared)
Semifinal: Poetry
Sunday, Feb 23, 2025
08:30 - Judge report time
08:45 - Semifinals: Prose
09:00 - Check-in for Debaters
09:30 - Round 4: Impromptu Debate Motion Released (45 min. of prep)
10:15 - Round 4: Debate start time
10:00 - Reimbursement for Judges (1 hour)
11:15 - Finals Flight A: Oratory, Prose, and Duo
12:15 - Finals Flight B: Poetry and Debate (Prepared)
14:15 - Closing Ceremony
15:30 - Departures
Judging
We welcome all high school graduates or above with C1 or higher English to judge at our tournaments. If you are new to BEST and our tournaments, visit our Judging Basics page!
Coaches, you must register if you are judging, too, and don’t forget to include your judges when you fill out your team roster spreadsheet (see below).
Our Judge sign up form could be accessed by following this link.
We will reimburse all judges for their transport if they use trains or buses, but we strongly encourage taking the most affordable option when possible (usually trains). Please purchase your ticket back from the tournament location as well, as we cannot reimburse you without being presented with tickets. We will provide food at the tournament site, and we will also cover one night of hotel accommodations for regional tournaments. In exceptional circumstances when a judge can’t make it to the tournament site before 11:00 AM on Saturday, we will cover two nights of hotel accommodation.
Coaching
BEST Coaches should download our Coaches’ Checklist and make sure their teams are up to date.
Debate motions
Prepared Motions
This house would prohibit elected officials from pursuing defamation lawsuits against media organisations.
This house opposes the increased shift to subscription based business models
Infoslide: Companies are increasingly adopting subscription models for selling their physical and digital products instead of solely relying on one-time sales. For example, physical products such as Oura smart ring, Tesla vehicles, and Peloton exercise bikes require monthly fees to unlock some or all features, while digital products such as Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft 365 have transitioned from one-time purchase to subscription-based access.
This house would increase the use of surveillance systems globally
Impromptu hints
ECONOMICS, environment, culture
RELATIONSHIPS, social, moral