You are cordially invited to the Third Annual Polygon Invitational. Polygon is run by the Washington High School (Fremont, CA) speech and debate team.

The tournament will be run online. We will offer a varsity and a novice division of parliamentary debate. The tournament will begin Friday after school, October 16 and will conclude Saturday, October 17. Varsity preliminary rounds will be “polygon” rounds with adjustments to regular parliamentary debate rules (see Section 15 of the round rules below). The Novice division, with four preliminary rounds and a final round, will be Saturday only.

Short URL
polygon.tabroom.com

Friday Check-in Procedures
Please see the sidebar.

Protests/Equity Complaints
If you have a concern about a rule violation and inappropriate behavior during the tournament, please fill out this Google Form.

Resolutions

Varsity resolutions will be posted on this Google Doc.

Novice resolutions will be announced on a different Google Doc.

The topic committee:
Riley Shahar (Crystal Springs, Los Altos, CFL topic committee member)
Zach Moss (Bishop O'Dowd)
Ginnie Kerr (Nueva, CFL topic committee member)

Topic area: at least one preliminary round in both novice and varsity will be based on the following topic area:

domestic agricultural policy.

Schedule

(All rounds are single-flighted. All times are in Pacific Time)

Open - Friday, October 16
3:00 - 4:00PM  Check-in
4:00 - 4:10PM  Judge Instructions
4:10PM  Round 1 topic announcement
6:00PM  Round 2 topic announcement
7:50PM  Round 3 topic announcement

Open - Saturday, October 17
6:00 - 9:10AM Check-in on Slack
9:20 - 9:30AM Judge Instructions
9:30AM  Round 4 topic announcement
11:20AM  Round 5 topic announcement
1:40PM  Quarterfinals topic announcement
3:30PM Semifinals topic announcement
5:00PM Finals topic announcement

Novice - Saturday, October 17
6:00 - 9:10AM Check-in on Slack
9:20 - 9:30AM Judge Instructions
9:30AM  Round 1 topic announcement
11:20AM  Round 2 topic announcement
1:40PM  Round 3 topic announcement
3:30PM Round 4 topic announcement
5:00PM Finals topic announcement

Fees

Varsity: $40/entry
Novice: $30/entry

If the entry fees make it financially difficult for your school to attend the tournament, please email debate.washington@gmail.com to inquire about fee waivers.

Fines
Late entry: $50/entry in addition to entry fee
Ballot not picked up on time: $50/incident
Ballot not submitted on time: $50/incident
Late payment: $50
There are no drop fines, but entries dropped after October 9 must still pay the entry fee

Payment
Payment is due October 15.
For payment instructions, click here.

Chaperones
The chaperon must provide a phone number and be reachable by the tournament director at all times during the tournament.
Because the chaperon must be available at all times during the tournament, they may not also be entered as a judge. Schools with only 1 or 2 entries may ask the tournament director for an exception at least 1 day prior to the judge entry deadline.
The chaperon must be able to reach any of their school’s students or judges.
No person may be listed as the chaperon for more than two schools.

Judges
The judge requirement is 1 judge for every 2 entries. The judge requirement is calculated separately for Open and Novice.
Open judges are obligated for both days; novice judges are only obligated for Saturday.
All judges are obligated through the end of the tournament, but may be dismissed earlier at the discretion of the Tournament Director.
All Open division judges must be at least 18, have graduated high school, and be fluent in English.
All judges eligible to judge Open are also eligible to judge Novice. In addition, students with at least 2 years of high school debate experience may judge Novice.
Coaches are responsible for ensuring that each of their school’s judges has a Tabroom account with working email and text notifications.

Entry Limits
Every school may enter up to 10 entries in Open and up to 10 entries in Novice. Any further entries will be waitlisted.

Novice Eligibility
A team may compete in the Novice division if both students on that team:
- are in their first year of high school debate competition,
- did not attend a summer debate camp,
- did not attend more than 3 middle school debate tournaments,
- are not in their third or more year of speech/Congress competition.

School Eligibility
All students must be in grades 8-12.
All school entries must compete under the name of the school they attend.
All school entries must be accompanied by their school-approved chaperon.
Hybrid entries are not allowed. Students from schools that don't have a debate team may request an exemption from this rule.
Each school is allowed one maverick entry in novice. No open maverick entries are allowed.

Independent Entry
For high school students to enter independently, the head coach or school administrator of their school must contact the Tournament Director by October 1 requesting that they be allowed to enter independently and explaining why it is not possible for them to enter as a school. The Tournament Director will then either approve or reject the request. If the request is approved, a $100 processing fee will be added to the invoice.
If students from a school compete as school entries, other students from that school may not simultaneously compete as independent entries.

Tabulation

The tournament will be run using Tabroom.com and NSDA Campus.

Judges and students should have Google Chrome installed, have a working webcam, and have a working headset with a microphone. Participants using an iPad should download the app version of the video tool that NSDA Campus uses which is called Jitsi.

The tiebreakers will be:
1. Number of wins
2. Opp seed
3. Random

Speaker points will not be used.

There will be no coin flips in elims. Sides in elims will be assigned randomly by the tabbing software.

Tab Director: Kwodwo Moore (CFL VP of Debate)
Assistant Tab Director: Julie Herman (Los Altos)

Round Rules (tl;dr version)

- One resolution per round in prelims. Topic strikes in elims.

- Squad prep is allowed. Coach prep is not.

- Internet prep is allowed.

- Rds 1-2: citing sources is not allowed.

- Rds 3-4: citing sources is allowed, but only if URL sent to judge at the end of prep.

- Rd 5, elims, all novice rounds: citing sources is allowed.

- Rds 4-5: flex time.

For full version of our round rules, please see the sidebar.

Disclaimer

The above policies are tentative. The tournament reserves the right to change them at any time.