North Texas Longhorns District Qualifier

for the 2018 National Tournament

Debate Event Information

Member schools of the North Texas Longhorn NSDA District are invited to compete in the debate portion of the district tournament. The following paragraphs will help with the details of the event.

DATE & LOCATION

Competitions in Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, and Public Forum debate will be offered on  Thursday & Saturday, February 22 & 24.   The tournament will be held at Jasper High School. The address is 6800 Archgate Dr, Plano, TX 75024

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Member schools may enter up to four entries in any of the three debate categories. Schools must have entries available in their allotted amount based on members and degrees. Public Forum and Policy debate teams count as one entry.

You must notify the district chair (David Huston) by February 15 of your intent to enter the debate portion of the tournament.  You may do so by entering students on this website. That intent should include the names of your students. Other procedures will follow the conducting of debate events as described in the District Tournament Manual. You will also need to bring the “official green sheet” with you for your official entry. If your students have entered or are planning to enter the individual events or Congress portions of the tournament, they must also complete the single entry letter of intent. You may use the links on the information page to download copies of those documents. REMEMBER: STUDENTS MAY ONLY ENTER TWO EVENTS IN DEBATE OR INDIVIDUAL EVENTS. IF YOU HAVE A STUDENT WHO IS PLANNING TO COMPETE IN TWO INDIVIDUAL EVENTS, THEY MAY NOT ENTER THE DEBATE PORTION OF THE DISTRICT TOURNAMENT. 

 The District Tournament manual has been amended to require an audit committee and a posting of results for all rounds. Coaches will ultimately be responsible for the accuracy of the results. We will be following these new requirements and procedures. 

Special tabulation information: The NSDA is moving to an online balloting system, especially for debate, using the tabroom.com website. At the end of each round, coaches will be able to see ballots and results by logging on to the website. There is a built in audit system for the website that may supercede the need for an audit committee. The plan will be to use paper balloting for individual events and the pre-described auditing process. We will follow the procedures as outlined in the High School Unified Operations Manual.  You may find the manual on the NSDA website. 

ENTRY FEES

The fee schedule is listed on the information page. You must bring either a PO or check with you to the tournament to participate.

JUDGES

All coaches are encouraged to submit names for possible judges to the district committee. The district committee, will be responsible for the procurement of judges for the tournament. If you have individuals wishing to be in the judge pool for the tournament, please give their names and contact information to one of the district committee. 

Please note: Because we have had difficulty in procuring judges in recent years, the district committee has determined that each school must be willing to provide up to two rounds of judging for each of the individual events and debate tournaments. Please enter that judge's name(s) on the appropriate part of this website. We will use these judges only when our hired judge pool has been exhausted or those individuals can no longer judge entries that are left in the tournament. Judges affiliated with schools may be hired by the tournament, but may not be counted against a school's obligation unless those persons are willing to be named as the school's designated judge.

 TOPICS WE WILL USE

POLICY DEBATE:  We will use the 2017-18 topic about education

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS: We will use the January/February topic about plea bargaining

PUBLIC FORUM: We will use the February topic about the capital gains tax

 STUDENT & COACH HOSPITALITY

There will be a coach/judge lounge set up for those attending and adjudicating the tournament. In addition, there will be a concession stand for students with varied fare at nominal prices.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

The schedule can be found under the "Tentative Schedule" link on this website. We will follow the same format and schedule that we did last year. We will begin with three rounds of debate on Thursday night. We will continue with three rounds of the public speaking individual events on Friday night. On Saturday, the tournament will continue with all events (including all of the interp event rounds). Please adjust your expectations for the tournament for those reasons.