The Palo Alto High School Speech and Debate team is reviving the Paly Novice Classic tournament for first-year Lincoln-Douglas debaters because of the limited number of novice competitions.

According to senior Speech and Debate co-president Ashley Hitchings, the tournament will occur today at Paly. The competitors will be novice Paly debaters and varsity team members will judge rounds in the competition, Hitchings said.

According to Hitchings, Paly has not hosted the classic in over four years, but the team’s coaches “revived” the tournament to give LD novice debaters more practice.

“Our novices only had one opportunity to debate first semester, and are likewise limited in their chances to compete second semester,” Hitchings said.

Freshman novice debater Sage Loomis was able to attend the first debate tournament for first-years, the Coast Forensics League Novice Lincoln-Douglas competition, and will be attending the tournament at Paly this weekend. Loomis said she has been preparing for the tournament since the beginning of the semester and hopes her performance will be better than her performance at CFL Novice LD.

“I think it’s going to be more informative this time because they’re going to have judges that aren’t just parents,” Loomis said. “They [varsity debaters] know how debate works.”