Southern Oregon Novice

(+ BQ Fire Relief Fundraiser)

Saturday, October 17th, 2020

Dear students, coaches and parents, 

St. Mary’s School is pleased to invite you to an online-only novice tournament to help kick off the 2020-2021 school year. This will be the first tournament ever for many students and the first online tournament for most others. We hope to make it a positive and welcoming experience for all. 

In addition, this tournament will serve as a fundraiser for fire relief efforts in the valley. All proceeds from our NSDA Big Questions grant will be donated to Southern Oregon Fire Relief. We would like to encourage as many students as possible to participate in this event so that we can maximize our giving. Toward this end, BQ will be open to both varsity and novice students. In addition, the schedule allows for varsity students to both compete in BQ and serve as a judge for the novice rounds. 

The tournament will be completely run on Tabroom with online ballots. Please visit www.tabroom.com to create a free account if you have not already done so. Both speech rounds and debate rounds will be conducted synchronously using software called NSDA Campus, with links to meeting rooms posted directly to the students’ and judges’ Tabroom accounts. 

This tournament is open to novice competitors only (with the exception of Big Questions). Novice competitors are defined as students who are in their first year of competition or who have had less than 10 rounds of competition prior to the current school year. 

Judges will be varsity students and community members trained to give positive feedback and gentle constructive criticism. Please bring at least one judge for every five entries. Extra judges are welcome! First-time judges desiring additional training may be assigned to rooms as spectators if requested. 

All events will be eligible for NSDA Honor Society points. OSAA Speech Handbook rules will be followed with the exception of Parli, as described below. Judges may give supportive feedback to students after speeches if requested. 

Students may enter a maximum of two speech events and one debate event (not including Big Questions). Big Questions will run concurrently with speech. Students who are entered in both speech and Big Questions should attend their speech round first to deliver their speeches, then excuse themselves to head to their Big Questions round. Big Questions is open to both novice and varsity competitors. 

There will be two rounds of speech and two rounds of debate, with no break rounds in either category. Awards will be given to the top three entries in each event following prelims.

There is a per-school entry fee of $25 to help cover the cost of NSDA Campus. 

Please register on Tabroom by Thursday, 10/15 at 5pm:

http://sonovice.tabroom.com

Schedule:

Judge Training: 8:30 AM-9:30 AM (https://smschool.zoom.us/j/91298664522?pwd=Q1lSNTVxTHM0MVM2YTBjUWx4T1RWQT09)

Speech Round 1: 9:30 AM-11:00 AM

(BQ Round 1): 10:00 AM-11:00 AM

Debate Round 1: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Speech Round 2: 12:30 PM-2:00 PM

(BQ Round 2): 1:00 PM-2:00 PM

Debate Round 2: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM

(BQ Round 3): 3:30 PM-4:30 PM

Awards Ceremony: 4:30 PM

Event-Specific Information:

Public Forum will use the September/October NSDA topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should enact the Medicare-For-All Act of 2019.

Lincoln-Douglas will use the September/October NSDA novice topic: Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.

Big Questions will use the 2020-2021 NSDA topic: Resolved: Mathematics was discovered, not invented.

Parliamentary Debate will be Oregon style but will be open prep. Students will be provided with three topics each round with the Government (AFF) striking one and the Opposition (NEG) then choosing which one will be debated, followed by 15 minutes of preparation time. During this time, students may access the internet to conduct research, but should not converse with anyone other than their partner.