CVFL Awards
CVFL offers a variety of team and individual awards celebrating excellence in speech and debate.
The Orator’s Cup
The Orator’s Cup is a CVFL-exclusive award designed to recognize students who are highly-skilled, highly ranked, who compete with great conduct, and are leaders within their team or the league.
2020 Orator’s Cup Debate Winner, Mira Loma High School
Speech Orator’s Cup
Awarded to the top 5 competitors in speech events as nominated and voted upon by the CVFL coaches. Awards are presented at the CVFL CHSSA State Speech Qualifying Tournament.
Speech Orator’s Cup recipients must have attended at least two speech events during the season.
Nominees need to be in “good standing” within the league
Nominations will be sent via email to the League Secretary along with a 100 word or less reason for the nomination. Coaches may nominate no more than 3 competitors.
Debate Orator’s Cup
Awarded to the top 5 competitors in debate as nominated and voted upon by the CVFL coaches. Debate Orator’s Cup Awards are presented at the CVFL CHSSA State Debate Qualifying Tournament .
Debate Orator’s Cup recipients must have attended at least two debate events during the season.
Nominees need to be in “good standing” within the league
Nominations will be sent via email to the League Secretary along with a 100 word or less reason for the nomination. Coaches may nominate no more than 3 competitors.
2020 Orator’s Cup Speech Winner, Woodcreek High School
The Sweepstakes Broom
The sweepstakes broom is CVFL’s team award, celebrating teams for their quality and quantity of competitors.
Despite the name, it is very much an award of skill, not luck.
Each entry in a tournament earns “sweepstakes” points based on their preliminary round performances.
Individual Sweepstakes Points Formula
In debate, each win earns 6 points, each bye earns 4 points, and each loss earns 3 points.
In Congress, each preliminary round earns 8 points for 1st/2nd, 7 points for 3rd/4th, 6 points for 5th/6th, 5 points for 7th/8th, and 4 points for all other places.
Presiding officers earn a flat rate of 6 points per round presided.
In speech, each preliminary round earns 7 points minus the entry's rank in the round (eg. 1st = 6 points), with a minimum of 2 points per round. Duo counts as one entry, not two.
Novice and varsity events both count equally for sweepstakes points.
Specific details may change — refer to our By-Laws for the source of truth!
Team Sweepstakes Formula (as of 2024-2025)
Team sweepstakes points are designed to encourage more entries, while also giving smaller teams a fair chance to compete against larger teams.
A team's sweepstakes points are calculated by taking its top 6 scoring entries for debate (or top 10 scoring entries for speech).
This means it is always beneficial to bring more entries: those extra entries might have a great performance! However, more entries doesn't guarantee sweepstakes victory: a team with 10 highly-scoring entries would score more points than a team of 20 entries that all scored average.
The top 10 points-earning schools will be announced at each awards ceremony. However, only the top sweepstakes school will earn CVFL's highest honor: the CVFL Sweepstakes Broom Traveling Trophy. This broom (get it, sweep-stakes?), adorned with a CVFL plaque on its handle, is bestowed to the team earning the most sweepstakes points for their scoring team. However, the Broom is a traveling trophy, and must be returned to the CVFL at the start of the next league tournament.
Small Schools Sweepstakes (as of 2024-2025)
A “small school” has 9 or fewer total entries in speech, and 5 or fewer entries in debate.
For small schools, the top 3 scoring entries for debate and top 5 scoring entries for speech are used.
The top small school will earn the CVFL Sweepstakes Miniature Whisk Broom Traveling Trophy. Smaller schools, smaller broom. Still commendable, still functional. And you still have to return it.
League Championship
The CVFL Sweepstakes Broom becomes a permanent (non-traveling) award at the conclusion of the CVFL state qualifier tournaments. The CVFL Sweepstakes Broom is permanently awarded to the school with the highest sum of sweepstakes points earned at both the CVFL Speech State Qualifier and the CVFL Debate State Qualifier.
In addition to earning the Broom, this school may also bask in the glory of their title as CVFL League Champions for the competitive season.
Team MVPs
Each school’s top sweepstakes points-earning student is recognized at the awards ceremony as their Team MVP!
Event Winners
CVFL awards pins for finalists and trophies for our event winners. These help us recognize great performances in speech and debate!
Spirit of Speech and Debate Award
The Spirit of Speech and Debate Award is a community-nominated award for schools that exhibit outstanding inclusivity or otherwise help to make our community a better place.
Each school is allowed to submit one nomination for another school that embodies the spirit of speech and debate. Whether that's being supportive in rounds, making a TikTok video together, or just helping find the bathroom, this is an open-ended award for teams that make the community more inclusive. We want to recognize and celebrate teams that make this league a fun place to be!
Ask your coach for the link to the Spirit of Speech and Debate Award. Submissions are due before Awards begins.
Outstanding Judge Award
At CVFL, we love our judges! The Outstanding Judge Award allows coaches and students to nominate judges that gave them exceptionally helpful feedback to make them better speakers and debaters.