Tournament Rules

Event/tournament Rules:

1.     All MSHSAA guidelines for good sportspersonship will be observed; smoking by juveniles or by adults in or outside of the building will not be tolerated.  There are cameras everywhere. Competitors violating the smoking policy or exhibiting poor sportsmanship will be expelled from the tournament and will forfeit all awards.  Please monitor your students.  No hacky-sack, tossing of balls, or other potentially damaging behaviors will be tolerated. 

2.     A qualified adult sponsor must be provided for all competition days. They may be asked to judge additional rounds if necessary. Please enter their information during the Tabroom.com registration.

3.      Policy uses the 2019-2020 NFHS Debate Topic concerning Arm Sales. Lincoln Douglas uses the Jan/Feb topic concerning nuclear arsenals. Public Forum will use the February topic released on Jan 1^st.

4.     Policy gets 8 mins of prep. PFD uses the new NSDA pilot rules. All events are encouraged to use the internet in rounds to facilitate the sharing of evidence, in round research, etc. Students may not communicate with those outside of the debate.

5.     Tie Breakers all events:

a.     Prelim Seeds: W/L, Pts-1HL, Average Opp win, Total Pts, Average Opp Seed, Random

b.     Speaker Awards: Pts-1HL, Pts-2HL, Total Points, Average Opp win, Z Score, Rand -1HL

6.     Every entry in elimination debates will get a trophy. Top 10 speakers will get speaker awards in each division. In case divisions collapse please be sure to mark “Novice” on your competitors when registering them in the novice division.

7.     If building space becomes an issue (We have very low expectations it will) We will first try to move LD and PFD to a flighted schedule and decrease the number of elims. Then, we will prioritize entries in the following order: VCX, NCX, VLD, NLD, VPFD, NPFD.