NCFCA National Championship

The NCFCA National Championship, often simply referred to as "Nationals" or "Nats", is the final tournament for NCFCA each school year. It is usually the largest tournament (in terms of competitors) that the NCFCA hosts over the course of the year.

Competitors can qualify to the National Championship through one of three methods:
 * 1) Performing well at a Regional Invitational tournament;
 * 2) Winning one of the top few slots at a National Open; or
 * 3) Through the at-large system.

Structure
The National Championship has the same basic structure as regional qualifier or regional invitational: three preliminary rounds of speech and six preliminary rounds of debate, followed by outrounds. There are several differences, however, which are more similar to the structure of a National Open:


 * Debate uses partial outrounds, advancing all teams with a winning record, but no teams with a 3-3 record. This generally means breaking to partial double octofinals.
 * Speech categories with six rooms or more break to quarterfinals.

Locations
The NCFCA has hosted never hosted Nationals at the same location twice, with the exception of Point Loma Nazarene University. California and Virginia have hosted the most National Championships, with a total of three each over 14 years. The full list of locations that NCFCA has used is below.

2000 - Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California

2001 - Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California

2002 - Murfreesboro, Tennessee (Details are lacking on the NCFCA website)

2003 - Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio

2004 - Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia

2005 - Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California

2006 - Patrick Henry College, Purcellville, Virginia

2007 - University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, Texas

2008 - Birmingham, Alabama (Again, details are lacking)

2009 - Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina

2010 - Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia

2011 - Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts

2012 - Northwestern College, St. Paul, Minnesota

2013 - Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Results
Main article: NCFCA National Championship tournament results

Winners
Winners of the National Championship do not generally earn prize money or scholarships, although many winners have been offered independent scholarships as a result of their debate accomplishments. Winners are also inducted (informally) into the NCFCA Hall of Fame, and may put the fact that they won an event on their resumes or high school transcripts.

Many winners are juniors or seniors in high school, and have been in the NCFCA for several years.

Showcase of Excellence

 * Video gallery: Showcase of Excellence videos

Beginning in 2013, the NCFCA let all the winners of the NCFCA individual events perform their Final Round speech (except limited-preparation events, which will be explained later in the article) one last time in front of the rest of the competitors and staff as part of the IE Showcase of Excellence. All winners are given a small microphone for the performance so as to not interfere with their performing the piece.

All interpretive and platform event winners perform their piece as given in the final round, even if the competitor deviated from their script. Limited-preparation event winners are as follows:

Extemporaneous: All final round competitors in Extemporaneous are asked to keep the card they used for the final round. If they are awarded first place, they may use the card again during the Showcase and give the same speech.

Apologetics: The winner of the event of Apologetics does not give the same speech as given in the final round of competition. Instead, the Apologetics champion may give a speech on their favorite topic out of all of the Apologetics topics used during the NCFCA season.

Impromptu: Once again, the winner of Impromptu does not give the same speech as was given in the final round; given that the competitor is not allowed to use a card during a round of Impromptu, this makes sense. Instead, the competitor does a regular Impromptu speech, with the only unusual thing about the speech is that there are several times more people watching the winner prepare and give their speech.

Illustrated Oratory final round competitors are asked to keep their boards in the event that he/she wins the event, so they are readily available for use and display during the Showcase.