Oct 27 MS #1 - Coaches Information

Welcome to our first MS tournament of the season!  We are glad you could join us today.  We continue to work to improve our tournament efficiency and quality so that you and your debaters have an enriching experience! 

We also will continue to work to be transparent about policies.  We believe providing information as appropriate will help everyone to work together to improve the quality of our tournaments.

To that end, a few notes about the day:

Schedule:

See the full schedule at the end of this document. 

As we noted last week, to accommodate the size of the tournament relative to rooms, we will be flighting the tournament.  This simply means that half of the debaters will be debating at a time.  All debaters will get 3 debates over the course of the day. 

We know that time with your debaters is important to you – as is supervision!  Our goal is avoid using any coaches as judges, a response to your calls for more time to coach and to be with your students.  We appreciate your willingness to help us if there is a need; but, if there is a need, we will not use two coaches from the same program at the same time.  We did not have enough coaches information readily available on Tabroom to provide you with the information about what blocks you will be “on-call”.   Moving forward, we hope to provide that information to you in advance of the tournament. 

Please coach your kids today on the following:

·       students that they should arrive at their room about 10 minutes before the start time.  So, for example, if they are in 1A, they would arrive about 9:05; 1B, they would arrive at 10:05. 

·       They should sit quietly outside the door and await the judge.  We will have additional staff monitoring each hall – the kids sitting outside quietly will help the staff to see visually what debates have and have not started. Students should not go and look for a judge or opponents.  We will help make sure people will get where they are going.   

·       After their debate is done, they should find your school in the cafeteria. 

Tabroom

Tabroom will help us with efficiency – and will be where you can find pairings for each round.  There will be a pairings tab on the tournament page.  The flights will be clearly listed on the pairings as will all judging for that round.  Flight 1 will have a 1 in the first column on the pairings; Flight 2 will have 2 in the first column on the pairings. 

You also can sign up to follow your teams – and receive an email with a digest of each round’s pairings for all of your teams. 

You can sign up to follow your teams at any point today.  Log into Tabroom.  Click on your account email in the upper right.  When you do, you will see “existing tournament registration”.  Click on MS tournament 1.  Click on website tab at the top.  Look to the right – and you’ll see Schools – right below that you should click on follow all entries from a school. 

Judging

Educating your judges – if you have judges who have volunteered for your school, please make sure that they receive a judge packet.  You should also have them attend judge training.  A few additional reminders:

·       Importantly, if a judge is set to just 1A, they will judge 1B.  It will be listed that way on the pairings as well. 

·       All judges – volunteers and otherwise – will be entering ballots online using tabroom.  If you are judging or someone for your school is, please see judging packet for more information about judging.  We have also included step by step instructions for judging at the end of this document. 

Awards

We will have awards at the conclusion of Round 3 in the cafeteria.  We will give out team awards for the top 20 teams in Beginners Division and top 10 teams in the Advanced Division.  We will also give top 10 speakers in Beginners Division and top 5 in the Advanced Division

We also will have treats for all of the competitors! 

Accessing your teams ballots once tournament is done

We will not publish results or ballots until the end of the day. 

Once we have published them, you will be able to see the results sheet as well as individual team ballots by loggin into tabroom.

To access, log into tabroom.  You will see a list of tournaments you are registered for, including MS Tournament #1. 

In the last column, you will see results (where it once said entry).  Click on results button next to MS Tournament #1.   You will see cumulative results sheets for the whole tournament as well as boxes to click to see your teams’ ballots.

These will continue to be available for you to visit throughout the season.  

Schedule

Round 1A                                             9:15 am -10:15 am

Round 1B                                              10:15 am - 11:15am

Round 2A                                             11:30-12:30

*Lunch will be delivered to judges in their rooms if they have to judge during this time

Round 2B                                              12:30-1:30

If competing in the 11:30 debate, debaters will eat after their debate (about 12:15 or 12:30)

If competing in the 12:30 debate, debaters will eat before their 12:30 debate (about 11:15 or 11:30)

*lunch  provided in cafeteria for competitors

Judge Training Session 2                        1:00 - 1:30

Round 3A                                             1:45 - 2:45

Round 3B                                              2:45 - 3:45

Awards Ceremony                                 4:00pm – 4:30pm

Filling in an online ballot on Tabroom

Step 5 (from Judge Packet): 

Fill out the online ballot

When all the speeches are done and before you engage the students in constructive comments, you will enter your decision and speaker points online through Tabroom.com. 

To access your ballot, you will want to click log in to tabroom.com on your phone’s browser.  If you have any trouble, please contact a hall monitor who will have an ipad available to help you to record your decision. 

Once you have logged in, you will click on your email in the upper right corner.  This will take you to a page that will show the debate and button that says “enter”.  Click that enter button.  You will see a ballot then.  You will need to pick a winner and assign speaker points.  Speaker points are performance points to each individual debater for their persuasiveness.  We have a scale of 25-30 points. 

You may also want to type comments in the blank space provided under the area where you select the winner. 

You will be asked to confirm your decision after you hit submit ballot. 

After you have picked a winner and assigned points, feel free to share a few quick comments with the debaters that they could use in the rest of their debates.

You can also add comments to the ballot after the debate is done.  You will not be able to change your decision; however, if you have additional comments you can enter them while the tournament is going on.  We will have laptop and ipad stations located in the library for this purpose if you would like to make use of them. 

Remember – after the first debate (1A, 2A or 3A) is complete, you will have a new group of 4 debaters waiting for you in the hall for the second debate (1B, 2B, 3B).  Escort the first group to the hall and have them go to the cafeteria – a hall monitor can help them.  You should stay at the room for the next debate