Dear colleagues,

The Lubbock High School Speech and Debate team is pleased to invite your team to our 2021 TFA Qualifying Tournament. As we are still dealing with the threat of pandemic and are very uncertain about the depth of our volunteer judge base, please keep a few things in mind:

1. Food: We will have a concession stand for students with reasonably priced snacks and drinks. But the items will be limited to individually packaged candies, chips, sodas, bottled water etc so as to minimize the risk of the spread of germs. Similar items will be available to judges, coaches, bus drivers, etc. at no charge--a small thank you for helping our tournament operate. However, please keep in mind that we do not plan to offer anything that would resemble a meal. There are several restaurants in the vicinity including a Pizza Hut across 19th Street (a busy street) and Raider Burrito across Ave. U. (a much less busy street). I'm hoping to provide a lunch break on the schedule so that students/coaches may have a little time to seek out lunch; but y'all know how tournament scheduling goes sometimes. Please plan accordingly--I think encouraging all students to pack a nutritious lunch would be wise.

2. Judges: We need you to judge and try to bring other judges with you if possible. We are running this tournament as a service to our regional forensics community; thus, we will not be charging judging fees. But here's the deal...every team must have an adult sponsor with them at all times and those adult sponsors have to be in the judging pool. 

Please enter in whatever judging pool that seems to make the most sense based upon your team's entry numbers; however, keep in mind that we will be using coaches in a variety of different ways--especially in debate events. I realize that some may not feel qualified to judge this or that--or that they just don't like certain events as much as others; but in many cases, the choice in judge comes down to either a professional forensics educator or a parent judge who has never even heard of "CX" or "LD."

We need you to help facilitate the tournament and provide the best educational experience possible for these students. 

That said, EVERY school entered must provide--at a minimum--one judge who is available for any/every round of the tournament. If you do not have a judge entered into any of the judging pools, your entries will be excluded from the tournament. If we need you and cannot find you at the judge's table, in the cafeteria, or by cell phone, you run the risk of having your team disqualified from the tournament. 

3. Entry Caps/Judges: Have I mentioned that we need your help with judging??  We do. We are starting off with very small caps on entries and hope/plan to grow the tournament if there is enough interest to do so. However, we will not do that until we feel confident in our judging pool. Before we start letting people off the waitlist, we will check judge entries and will prioritize the schools who are working hard to help us with judging. Adding a 2nd judge to the pool...or even a 3rd, will help inspire confidence.

Please keep in mind that this will not be a large tournament no matter what. We want to keep the schedule as humane as possible and ensure that there will be no more than 5 debate rounds (3 prelims, semis, finals) and 3 individual event rounds (prelim 1, prelim 2/semis, and finals). 

4. Lubbock High School has a very large cafeteria which will be used as a holding room for teams between rounds. Please make yourselves comfortable, spread out, and wear masks between rounds as you deem appropriate. COVID cases and deaths in Lubbock have been declining; the vaccination rate is going up. That is great news but until the death count goes down to zero, any extra bit of vigilance we can provide is appreciated. 

Having said all that, here is some tournament specific information.

Event patterns:

Debate: CX, LD, and congress (may not cross enter within this pattern and may not enter other patterns)

Pattern A: DI, Inf, POE, IX, DX, Duet (may enter 2 events within pattern, may only enter 1 extemp, may enter pattern B)

Pattern B: HI, OO, POI, Pro, Duo (may enter 2 events within this pattern, may enter Pattern A)

Please note: cross enter at your own risk; we'll instruct judges to be reasonable about waiting, but we will not let cross entries be a reason for running way behind schedule.

Extempers: go to extemp 1st. 

Debate:

CX Topic: The United States federal government should substantially increase its protection of water resources in the United States.

LD Topic: A just government ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.

We will break brackets in out-rounds of debate events. 

LD will be flighted

Congress:

We will use the TFA Fall Docket.

Prelims: bills 11-15; Finals bills 16-20.

We will use direct questioning.

 Awards:

 Team sweepstakes awards will be calculated as follows:

12 points- 1st place

10 points- 2nd place

8 points- 3rd place

6 points- 4th place

4 points- 5th place- 8th place

Sweepstakes will be awarded to the top three teams.

The top 6 entries in each speech event will receive awards. 

All semi-finalists and finalists in debate will receive awards

Revised Schedule: We're going to Quarters in LD (Any speech/debate tournament is tentative--please stay close to postings)

 Registration 7:15-7:45

8:00: Extemp Draw

8:30:Round 1 Debate/ Pattern A RD1

9:00-12:00 Congress Finals

10:30 Debate Round 2/ Pattern B RD1

12:00 to 1:00: Lunch Break (PLEASE understand that this lunch break is planned with the assumption that we’ll be more or less on time…we plan to start extemp draw at 1:15)

1:15 Extemp Draw

1:30: Debate Round 3/ Pattern A RD2

3:30 CX Semis/LD Quarters/Pattern B RD 2

5:00 CX Finals/ LD Semis/Pattern A Finals

6:00 Pattern B Finals/LD Finals