Tournament Guide

 32^nd Annual Grapevine Classic Guide 

General Guidelines

*Ballots will be ONLINE through Tabroom.com.  All coaches, competitors, and judges will need to create a Tabroom.com (free) account to participate in the tournament.  

*Postings for all rounds will be blasted.

*An adult sponsor (authorized by the school) must be in attendance at all times either by judging at the tournament or waiting in the virtual designated judging pool.

*Oratories, as well as interpretation and Duet selections, must be available upon request.

*Any team or competitor that is more than 15 minutes late to their round (their fault not our fault) will forfeit that round with zero speaker points.

*We will accelerate the schedule when possible – please remain available during the tournament to avoid forfeiture.

*All judges will complete training prior to judging their first round at the tournament.

*No show judges, like no show students- will be charged. 

 *If you are not listed on a debate round – please stand by in the designated virtual judging pool. 

  *All school judges- both IE and debate are obligated to judge 1 round past their student’s elimination; please remain available. 

NSDA Campus Expectations and Guidelines

*Everyone must have a Tabroom account to participate.

*Every judge and competitor will need a device with a microphone and camera, as well as a separate device (phone, tablet, etc) for communicating with partner/ team in round- if applicable.

*Use of Google Chrome as your browser is highly recommended.

* Logging into Tabroom when competition begins will show upcoming rounds with a video icon, rather than a room number.

* Only the judge(s) and competitors may access their competition rooms- except for Tab/Tournament staff. This means a few things:

- No observers will be allowed to view rounds.

- Any students not competing at the tournament will not have access to any rooms (competitive or otherwise)

-Coaches will not be able to view their students’ rounds.

                               *The reason for all of this is security.

*Every team will have a virtual squad room available throughout the tournament. Coaches, judges, and students registered for that school for the tournament will have access.

*All IEs, except for Extemp, will be ASYNCHRONOUS. Deadlines for submission of videos coming soon.

*Test rooms are available on the NSDA website with a login- these rooms will at least show you what a competition room will look like.

*Video links for IEs (except for Extemp) will be accessible on the ballot.

*There is a limit of 15 users per room- this will obviously result in decreased size of congressional chambers.

Entry Limits, Event Sections, & Cross-Entry

Sections

Entry Limits Per School: Quick Reference Chart

Extra Notes on Entry Limits and Cross-Entry:

• Entries in CX will be limited to 2 entries, 4 entries per LD, and 4 entries in PFD.
• We will have a waiting list for schools who might want more than their limit, but that list will only be used if the entry total is below our maximum.
• Entries are limited in Congressional Debate to 8 from each school with a wait list available for more entries, and it will run on a schedule that Congressional Debate entries may enter.
• Individual Events are limited to a total of 4 events in section A and B, with a limit of 2 in each section, and a total limit of 8 competitors entered in section A and B for each school.
• We will be offering HI, DI, USX, FX, OO, DUO, POI, INFO, PROSE, and POETRY.  Individual events will be Saturday only with every IE entry guaranteed 2 preliminary rounds for each event before going into the required elimination rounds depending on the entry. 
• Brackets will not be broken in any debate event.  We will also be planning to have panels in elimination rounds, if possible.
• We do reserve the right to collapse JV and Varsity in any event in order to retain reasonable numbers for the Varsity division. However, if this decision is made, entries originally entered in JV will NOT be required to cover Varsity level fees.

Debate Topics

o   The LD topic will be the September/October NSDA topic

o   The CX topic will be the high school 2020-2021 Policy topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following: forensic science, policing, sentencing.

o   The PFD topic will be the NSDA topic for September/October

o   The World School Debate Topics will be announced or published.

o   Congress Legislation can be found in the Congress section.

Extra Notes on Topics:

·       Contact us if you need event rules for the TFA events, which can be found at  www.txfa.org.

·       Congress legislation and World School Debate prepared motions are available in the same location.

Deadlines

Friday, September 4 at 4:00 pm - Preferred Entry Deadline. You may continue to make changes on the site without penalty until the drop deadline. No new schools may enter after this time.

Friday, September 4 at 11:59 pm - Judges Due & Fees Freeze. After this point, drops will cost the original entry fee plus a $30 additional fee will be charged per IE, Duo/Duo, congress entry, and World School Debate - $50 penalty per debate entry. 

Tuesday, September 10 at 4:30 pm – Drops and Name Changes Deadline. All name changes and drops are due at this point. If you drop an entry after this point you'll accrue an additional nuisance fee of $30 per drop plus loss of your entry fee.

Tuesday, September 8 at 4:30 pm- Jonathan Brody Award Nominations Deadline

Tuesday, September 8 at 11:59 pm- Asynchronous Video Uploads Deadline

Thursday, September 10^th at 1pm - Prefs Deadline

Fees

*Individual Events $20     *Congressional Debate $30.00     *VLD $60.00      *JVLD $50.00

*VCX $80.00    *JVCX $70.00    *PFD $60.00   *JVPFD $50.00  *WSD $80

We know this is early in the year but payment is due upon registration or proof of check request or a purchase order.  No student will be allowed to participate unless proof of payment arrangements are provided. Checks should be made to “The Grapevine Classic”.

Please pay as promptly as possible.

We do reserve the right to collapse JV and Varsity in any event in order to retain reasonable numbers for the Varsity division. However, if this decision is made, entries originally entered in JV will NOT be required to cover Varsity level fees.

Payment

Please send checks to the school address:

Grapevine High School

Attn: Stormee Massey

3223 Mustang Dr. 

Grapevine, TX 

76051  

Please send POs to stormee.massey@gcisd.net.

Judges

• Each school is required to provide at least 1 QUALIFIED judge per event entered.
• Grapevine Classic will use ONLINE BALLOTS through TABROOM.COM.  
• ALL JUDGES will need to get a Tabroom.com account no less than two weeks from the tournament start date. Tabroom accounts are required to post a paradigm and access the ballots when tournament begins. 
• Schools are expected to bring QUALIFIED judges.
• Schools may not “buy out” their obligations.
• If you have a judge on Friday for debate, you must also have a judge on Saturday or you will pay for a judge on Saturday.
• Anyone wishing to be hired by the Grapevine Classic should fill out the HIRED JUDGE form under the “Judges” tab.

JUDGING RESPONSIBILITIES:

3 Rounds per entry in VCX/JCX. 5 Rounds can cover two teams.

2 Rounds per entry in VLD/JLD/VPF/JPF

1 judge per 8 IE/Duo entries or portion thereof

1 judge per 2 WSD teams or portion thereof

If you cannot provide the judges you are responsible for based on your entries, please see the fee chart below:

Judging Fees:

Extra Notes on Judges:

*CONGRESS: The judge fee will automatically be assessed unless there are 2 or less entries from your school competing in Congress.
*Minimum number of rounds per debate judge per debate entry is 5 rounds for prelims (1 CX team = 3 prelim rounds, 2 CX teams = 5 rounds, 1-2 LD/PFD = 4 rounds, 3-4 LD/PFD = 7 rounds).  Every judge in the pool is obligated 1 round past your school's elimination in that event.

* If your school has too many entries that your school judges can't be used - your school will be charged $100 per judge required that can't be used in preliminary rounds for IEs.

*ALL SCHOOL JUDGES MUST BE SUBMITTED BY FRIDAY, September 4th, 2020 AT 11:59 PM or fees will be added to your invoice.  

Pref Sheets

• We use MJP for CX and LD.  We use a strike sheet for PFD.

• Our goal is to have rankings/rating sheets online by Wednesday morning to allow schools to review these lists and enter their choices online.
• Those will be done on the Tabroom.com website.
• Schools will have until 1pm on Thursday, September 10^th to enter their preferences. Any school that opts to/neglects to fill out the information online (and by the deadline) will forfeit the privilege to do so.
• Debate coaches are strongly encouraged to embrace the responsibility of filling this information out themselves and not turning it over solely to students.
• If the tab room feels adjustments to the judge pool/assignments are in the best interest of tournament to do so, we will exercise that option. So that no confusion about this statement exists, one example where the tab room might exercise its jurisdiction to change a panel's make up is if all first-year judges make up an elimination round panel. Rest assured we will attempt to honor preferences.
• If a school's judge(s) is unreachable and fails to meet the school's commitment, a fine of $100.00 will be assessed. Those not paying within 30 days will have their school's name passed on to the Director of other major invitationals and a letter will be sent to their principal or head of school.

Sweepstakes

Grapevine HS has a long history as a complete squad of winning in All Debate Events and All Speech events, thus we have decided to award other schools which have strong programs in both.

There will be 1 Sweepstakes Award for Debate, 1 Sweepstakes Award for IEs and then a GRAND SWEEPSTAKES which will include schools which enter BOTH Debate events and IE events.

-The Top 4 participants in each IE event and congress will count for sweepstakes.

-For Debate - 2 Policy teams, 4 PFD teams, 4 LD debaters, and 2 WSD teams will count.

SWEEPSTAKES FORMULA (Revised 1/16/2020)- May be updated prior to tournament start date due to sweepstakes adjustments.

All IE'S, Duo/Duo: 1st - 20 2nd - 15 3rd – 10 Finals - 

Congressional Debate: 1st – 20, 2nd – 15, 3rd – 10, 4th -8th - 5

World School Debate 1st -20, 2nd- 15, 3rd -10, quarters worth 5 points

Debate 1st – 20, 2nd – 15, 3rd – 10- quarters worth 5 points