Crusader Speech/Debate Invitational
January 11th-12th, 2019
at St. Mary’s School

Dear Coaches and Students,

You are cordially invited to a two-day speech and debate tournament to be held on Friday, January 11th, and Saturday, January 12th at St. Mary’s School in Medford, Oregon.

Registration

All registration will be online at www.tabroom.com. The deadline for adds/drops is Wednesday, January 9th, at 8 PM. If you need to make changes after that time, please text 425-749-2142 with your team, the name of the student, and the event. You should also notify staff at the registration table of any further drops or changes.  

Events

This tournament will feature both novice and varsity (open) divisions in most events, assuming that there are a sufficient number of entries. If there are too few entries in an event, divisions may be collapsed. Congress will be single division.  

Students may double enter in Pattern C (speech), but NOT in Patterns A or B. Please note that Congress conflicts with Pattern A on Friday evening, so students who compete in Congress will not be able to choose a Pattern A event. We guarantee at least three prelim rounds for debate events and two prelim rounds for IEs.

Tournament Fees

The entry fee for each school is $25. Fees are $8 per event except for Big Question, which is $5 per entry.

Judge Coverage

Schools should provide at least one judge for every two debate teams and one judge for every five IE entries. We need your help to provide our students the best feedback possible. If we are short on judges, SMS senior team members may join novice judging panels. We will provide judges with meals and snacks on both days.

We will use all online ballots through Tabroom. Please make sure judges have linked Tabroom accounts and bring smart devices. (Computers are available for ballot entry as needed.)

Debate Topics—topics will be the same for the novice and open divisions.

Public Forum will use the January NSDA topic and Lincoln Douglas will use the January/February topic. Topics will be announced December 1st at https://www.speechanddebate.org/topics/.

Parliamentary Debate will feature three topics each round with the government (AFF) striking one and the opposition (NEG) then choosing which will be debated followed by 15 minutes of closed preparation time. Only a dictionary and writing materials are allowed during prep.

Congress will feature the January NSDA bill packet. Teams may also submit additional student-authored bills by Monday, January 7th, at 6 PM. Please e-mail bills to mbruins@smschool.us. The entire legislative packet will be e-mailed out on Tuesday, January 8th.

We are excited to feature Big Questions debate, an NSDA event that asks competitors to analyze complex existential topics. The Big Questions topic for this year is "Resolved: Humans are primarily driven by self-interest." Our Big Questions event will consist of 1- or 2-person teams. We will follow NSDA rules for Big Questions, which can be found here along with sample cases and other resources: https://www.speechanddebate.org/big-questions/

We will follow OSAA guidelines for all events. We will not use the internet during debates.