District 1 Spring 2021 Rookie Policy Tournament (Hosted by Southwestern College)

April 30th, 2022

Dear District 1 and Policy Debate Community:

Southwestern College on behalf of District 1 is inviting you to a one-day online practice tournament for rookie and novice policy debaters on Saturday, April 30th, 2022. The day will consist of three debate rounds, assuring each team can have at least one affirmative and one negative round.  There will be an optional Topic Lecture in the morning before the debate rounds.

The D1 committee (made up of Jeanette Rodriguez, Joel Salcedo, Erika Thomas, and Eric Maag) successfully offered the first Rookie Tournament in the Fall of 2021 hosted by Cal State Fullerton.  The goal is to create a model for a D1 Rookie Tournament that can be offered once every semester in order to rebuild participation in Rookie and Novice debate.  We are hopeful that the model for this tournament will make it easy to allow for the tournament hosts to be interchangeable so that any interested D1 schools may participate in hosting on a revolving basis.  If your school is interested in hosting this event in the future, let us know.

The tournament will be run on Zoom this semester. Members of the Southwestern College coaching staff will lead the coordination of instruction and tabulation that day.  If you have anyone who wants to assist in tabbing the tournament in order to gain experience, please let us know.  

The tournament is free – no registration costs – as long you can send the appropriate judge coverage for your teams. A $50 dollar fee will be charged for each uncovered team entered.   Students will be limited to evidence from the American Debate Association packet during this tournament.

Please consider sending any rookie/incoming-novice students from your clubs, co-curricular courses, or public speaking/argumentation courses. If students can only attend parts of the day (e.g. just the instruction portion or just the competition), we will do our best to accommodate them. If you have interested competitors but are short judging and cannot pay the uncovered judge fee, please let me know and we can brainstorm options.

Regarding judging, please send high-quality judges who are also nice, friendly, encouraging, and value their role as a teacher or instructor. We want students to leave this day excited about our activity and well-versed on what to expect at future intercollegiate policy tournaments (or other intercollegiate tournaments for other styles of debate). The varsity debaters, graduate assistant coaches, coaches and directors from all of our programs make excellent instructive judging during and after these rounds.

The rest of our tournament information is included below. Feel free to direct any preliminary questions to Tournament Director Eric Maag at emaag@swccd.edu

Thanks,

Southwestern College and the D1 Rookie/Novice Subcommittee

Ryan Wash  rwash@swccd.edu

Director of Debate, Southwestern College

Eric Maag  emaag@swccd.edu

Tournament Director, Assistant Director of Debate, Southwestern College

Objectives and pedagogical goals:

·      Provide FREE high-quality, practice and virtual competition for District 1

·      Assist recruitment and retention tool for programs with new, novice debaters

·      Teach students key evidence, basic policy debate structure, how to use evidence in rounds, how to develop the arguments, and the key points of clash for this year’s intercollegiate policy resolution

·      Provide a mini tournament-based debate experience for competitors with little or no training in competitive intercollegiate policy debate

Registration & Prefs:

You can register at: http://d1rookieinvitational.tabroom.com

Deadline to enter is April 27th at 11:59 pm pacific time. 

Fees:

The tournament is free of cost unless you are unable to provide judges for your entries.  A $50 fee will be assessed for each team that is uncovered by a judge. 

Divisions:

This tournament will offer Rookie and Novice divisions as defined by CEDA

Format & Topic:

Teams are composed of 2 debaters each; 1 judge is needed per 2 entered teams. 3 prelim rounds. We will be using the 2021-2022 CEDA/NDT resolution.  Judges should pick a single winning team in each debate and use a 30-point speaker scale with decimals – no ties allowed. 

Debate/Structure Time limits:

1AC: 6 minutes
2NC CX of 1AC: 3 minutes
1NC: 6 minutes
1AC CX of 1NC: 3 minutes
2AC: 6 minutes
1NC CX of 2AC: 3 minutes
2NC: 6 minutes
2AC CX of 2NC: 3 minutes
1NR 4 minutes

1AR 4 minutes
2NR 4 minutes
2AR 4 minutes

5 minutes of preparation time per team. Total talk and prep time = 62 minutes per debate.

Evidence:

Any evidence from the ADA novice packet can be used during the tournament.

SCHEDULE: Saturday, April 30th, 2022

9:00am                        Optional Topic Lecture

10:00 am                     Welcome and Check in (Zoom)
10:30 am -12 pm         Round 1
12 pm – 1 pm              Lunch
1 pm – 2:30 pm           Round 2
2:45 pm – 4 pm           Round 3
ASAP or 4:15 pm       Closing Ceremony/Speaker/Shout-outs