Online Policy League (OPL) Prospectus (5/10/21)

Greetings.

For the 2021-2022 season, we are offering a series of virtual tournaments for high school policy debaters. The goal is to capitalize on what we’ve learned from virtual tournaments to create a casual online policy league offering cheap and geographically—at the very least—diverse rounds separate from the more demanding (and expensive) regular invitationals. The league is open to any official school program, regardless of geography, although reasonable exceptions might be possible. 

There are no league fees or requirements, other than the restriction that only coaches or school-designated adults can register teams, and that the person must be available as the contact up to and during the event. 

We will conduct roughly one tournament a month, 3 rounds on Saturdays, scheduled at 10, 1 and 4. Schools must cover their entire judge burden (1 judge for 2 teams within each divisions); HS juniors can judge novice, HS seniors can judge JV. Certificates will be awarded, plus eventually a few medals, no trophies. $5 a team entry fee to cover NSDA Campus room costs and those eventual medals. Registration is limited to runnable division sizes; no same-school matches. Finances will be run through the NYCFL for the sake of efficiency; however, OPL is not otherwise connected to NYCFL in any way, and OPL registrants need not be NYCFL members, or even New Yorkers. 

Provided numbers allow:

• There will be one div of Novice, first-years-only in any HS debate, using the season’s novice packet; Sheryl Kaczmarek of Lexington HS will manage the packet issues. 

• There will be a division of JV.

• There will be an Open division.

Former Middle School debaters will be placed at their coaches’ discretion, but should not be placed in the Novice division before December unless their middle school experience is very limited. The goal of the league is to provide an educational experience, which should be the coaches’ guiding principle. Actual Middle Schoolers are not accepted as entrants.

Registration for the Saturday events closes the prior Tuesday with a fee freeze at noon; we need to have serious commitments from schools that wish to enter, and this slight fee freeze will help with that, as this is when we must order NSDA Campus rooms.. Fees will be billed after each event. Registrants must check in online tournament day by 9:00 a.m.

Tentative schedule:

• 9/8 - Very very tentative date: Online meeting for interested coaches. This is an evolving new league that wants to support all the participants — not all issues can be answered now in this document. 

• 10/9 (Perhaps including a specific rookie division for novices with no MS experience—it depends)

• 10/23

• 11/13

• 12/18

• 1/22

Rounds would be entirely virtual regardless of the status of anything else happening that day, and discrete to OPL. Tabbing initially handled by Jim Menick, Aubrey Semple and Sheryl Kaczmarek. Volunteers welcome, especially folks interested in learning tabroom.com, but all teams must cover all of their judging obligations with active judges.