The MNUDL would like to invite you to participate at the 2020 Tamar Kaplan Invitational at Highland Park High School!  

Tournament Overview
We will offer Varsity, JV, Open Novice, Packet Novice, and Rookie divisions in Policy Debate.  Rookies may only use evidence in the Rookie evidence packet (all files marked 'Rookie' are eligible for Rookie debate - files marked 'Novice' are NOT). Closed Novice debaters may only use materials in the Novice Packet (all files marked 'Novice' or 'Rookie' are eligible for Closed Novice). Open Novice entries are limited by the guidelines for Open Novice, which will be enforced by whoever is judging the Open Novice debate.

Every entry will have a judge obligation of .5 (so, for example, if you register 4 partnerships you would have a judge obligation of 2, which means you would need 2 judges to judge all 3 debates. Half obligations will be rounded up.) As part of an initiative to provide Novices and Rookies with high quality feedback, all available judges will be eligible to judge Novice and Rookie. Varsity and Junior Varsity will continue to be judged exclusively by experienced/qualified judges as determined by the tab staff. Currently Varsity and Junior Varsity students are eligible to cover Novice and Rookie judge obligations. Strikes for JV/Varsity will be available depending on the number of qualified judges and how early those judges are entered.

Schedule

Friday

• Registration/check in/team Tech Check: 3:30-4:00pm
• Pre-round Tech Check 4:15-4:30
• Round 1: 4:30-6:15pm

• Dinner: 6:15-7pm
• Round 2: 7:00-8:45pm

Saturday

• Registration/check in/team tech check: 8:30-9:15am
• Round 1: 9:30am-11:15am
• Mid morning snacks and prep 11:15-11:30 
• Round 2: 11:40am-1:15pm
• Lunch: 1:15-1:45
• Round 3/Varsity Semifinals: 2:00-4:00
• Varsity finals: 4:30-6:30pm
• Awards will be sent out asynchronously

Registration

Please try to enter tentative registration by Tuesday night (the 10th) so that we can make any arrangements to hire judges as needed. Please have your final guess registrations in by Thursday night (the 12th).

Please make checks payable to:

Minneapolis MN  55406 

Tabulation Procedures:

All divisions will be lag paired in order to help assure the tournament runs as close to on time as possible while still providing quality competition. 

As a general rule partnerships more than 15 minutes late to their debate will be marked as forfeited. Extenuating circumstances may override this rule but it is up to the discretion of the tab staff. Judges must check with tab before assigning a legitimate forfeit. Efforts will be made by tab to locate missing teams before marking them forfeited, but ultimately it is up to those students and their coaches to arrive to the debate in a timely manner.

If there are not enough entries in JV for 3 unique debates it will be collapsed into Varsity to form an 'open' division before the tournament starts. If there are not enough entries in any other division then the tab staff will be in contact with the teams with entries in those divisions to figure out a workable solution. 

If a school does not fulfill their judge obligation then the tab staff reserves the right to drop as many partnerships from that school as would cause them to meet their judge obligation. This includes a scenario where a judge leaves mid-day without fulfilling their full obligation. The tab staff will attempt what they can to prevent dropping partnerships, but ultimately if there aren't enough total judges to cover the pool of competitors then some entries will need to sit out. Tab will attempt to contact a coach on the team that is having entries dropped starting with the primary contact listed, but if it cannot be done in a time frame that would keep the tournament running on time then the tab will make the unilateral decision about what teams to bench. 

Please make sure all teams and judges are linked on tabroom before Thursday night. Also, please make sure that the coach who will be 'at' this tournament is listed as the primary coach on the registration page - we will be calling them if any debaters/judges are missing.

Tournament Location:

Online