Dear Coaches,

We are pleased to invite you to the ASDA State Tournament March 5-7 on the campuses of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Please take time to navigate the pages listed to the right for all pertinent information regarding this tournament. In addition, I have posted the ASDA rules. There are a few things that I want to highlight.

1. Every event (Congress, Speech, and Debate) will be run online. ALL judges need to have tabroom.com accounts. This will make the entire tournament more transparent, faster, and less error-prone.

2. Large teams please be aware of the entry cap rules. 24 in IE, and 20 in Debate. For Congress, you may enter up to 6 students in 2 of the 3 chambers.

3. Please, please, please bring judges! This tournament only works if it is single flighted.

4. I will send out ASDA Coach of the Year ballots via email to coaches at a future time.

5. Tabroom registration closes on Friday, February 28, one week prior to the start of the tournament.

6. Legislation must be emailed to conolynb@vestavia.k12.al.us by Wednesday, February 26th. The packet will be sent back out to coaches Thursday, February 28th, one week before Congress begins. Each school may submit a maximum of 3 bills, to avoid the docket getting too large.

7. In Speech, if there are 7 or fewer entries, there will be no Final round with place being determined by rounds 1-3. If there are 8 or more entries, there will be a Final round with place being determined by Finals.

8. In Debate, if there are 7 or fewer entries, we will have a Round Robin tournament in that division. If there are 8 - 15 entries, we will break to Semifinals in that division. If there are 16 - 39 entires, we will break to Quarterfinals in that division. If there are 40+, we will break to Octafinals in that division.

9. This year the tournament will offer Big Questions. This will run at the same time as the other debate events on Saturday in the same way. Entries into this event will count towards your 20 entry debate cap and will count towards sweepstakes points. In addition, if the event has at least 15 entries, the champion of Big Questions will qualify to NSDA Nationals in June! In addition, the top 4 competitors will each receive $250 for their speech and debate team. The NSDA can also provide financial travel assistance of $100 per big questions entry. The link for application for travel assistance as well as more info on this is listed below

Form for travel assistance: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfzpQUnjYb-zOdGQgWbFvHxi-RXyYKN4E6JJWNbEUkAXrsP_w/viewform

The NSDA will provide travel support for NSDA member schools with at least one (1) Big Questions student competitor at the Big Questions tournament.  Both the school and the student must be NSDA members at the time of the travel support application. Schools may receive no more than $100 per Big Questions competitor. Interested schools must request support prior to the tournament through an NSDA online application process. The total financial support allocated to schools may not exceed $2,000. If the requests exceed $2,000, the NSDA will ask the Alabama leadership to assist in deciding the funding allocation. The NSDA will alert schools of the funding assistance they may expect. The NSDA will provide funding to the school, speech & debate team, booster club, or non-profit after the necessary post tournament reporting forms have been completed. 

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you at the tournament. 

Sincerely,

Nate Conoly, State tournament director

conolynb@vestavia.k12.al.us