Debate Info & Rules

ALL EVENTS WILL BE CONDUCTED SYNCHRONOUSLY (LIVE) VIA NSDA CAMPUS

All events will follow PHSSL rules - which can be found at https://www.phssl.org/documents-forms/

-Parli Topic Areas:

Age Limits
The Law
Latin America
Commonly Held Beliefs
Below the Earth's Surface

Tiebreakers & Round Seeding

School protections/constraints will be in place for all preliminary rounds.

For both Speech and Debate, there will be 1 judge used per preliminary round/room.

Events, unless otherwise noted, will follow the following tiebreak systems.

Debate Seeding for Preliminary Rounds (Public Forum, Lincoln Douglas, and Parliamentary):

1. # of Wins (Byes count as a full win)

2. Opponent Seed

This metric is calculated by the average seeds of the opponents that a debater has faced, which recalculates every round as seeds change.  It serves to weight the total wins/losses that a debater receive by the difficulty (i.e. seed) of their opponents.  

3. Head-to-Head

If two competitors are tied for placement and have at least once in the tournament, the team that won the debate will be given the higher rank. If the competitors have hit multiple times (typically prevented), it is possible to tie on this metric. If the competitors have not hit so far, this metric will read 0 and is not counted.

4. Standardized Points (JudgeVar2 in Tabroom)

Calculates from a baseline of all the scores that have been received by the debaters that the judge has judged across the tournament (as opposed to all the scores across the tournament as a whole). This adjustment in theory lessens the effect of having two sets of judges who give sharply different point scales within the same pool.

Formula is ((score - judge's mean) / judge's std deviation) * population standard deviation) + population mean 

5. Total Points

6. Opponent Points

Sum of points received by opponents faced in all preliminary rounds.

Debate Schedule & Powerpairing

- Rounds 1 and 2 will be paired randomly.

- Rounds 3, 4, and 5 (tentative) will be paired in Hi Lo, following the seeding method above, and accounting for school constraints (i.e. same schools will not hit).

- The Final will be between the top 2 competitors/teams in each event