Dear Debate Coach,

You are invited to the annual Lawrence Free State Invitational.  Our tournament will be held on Friday and Saturday, September 23^rd and 24^th.  Our Tournament will offer the following divisions: Varsity (KDC), Varsity (DCI), and Novice (Saturday Only). 

KDC Division:

Ø  This division is open to any student. We expect that most schools will choose to put their “best” traditional style Varsity teams in this division.

Ø  Judged by LFS community judges, assistant/head coaches who volunteer, etc.

Ø  We will break the top eight teams to a quarterfinals bracket.

Ø  We will provide speaker awards to the top 8 speakers.

Ø  This division will have no case list restriction.

DCI Division:

Ø  This division is open to any student. We expect that most schools will choose to put their “best” contemporary style Varsity teams in this division.

Ø  This is where we will put all of the flow judges who volunteer to judge at our tournament, in addition to the judging providing by schools.

Ø  We will break the top eight teams to a quarterfinals bracket.

Ø  We will provide speaker awards to the top 8 speakers.

Ø  This division will have no case list restriction.

Novice Division

Ø  This division is Saturday Only. This division is open to any student who is in their first-year debating.

Ø  Judged by LFS community judges…we expect this division to be comprised of 100% lay judges and/or high school juniors/seniors who may be used in the event of dire need.

Ø  We will place the top 8 teams.

Ø  We will provide speaker awards to the top 8 speakers

Ø  This division will adhere to the Kansas Debate Coaches Affirmative Case Area list and the NDCA negative packet positions.

The tournament will become whatever size totals out to be double the number of rooms that my administration allows me to use.  I will accommodate as many teams as possible. I expect to have around 60 rooms (120 teams)

You may enter up to 4 teams. I will reciprocate all entries I have been granted first, before accepting any other entries off of the waitlist.  Next, I will offer spots to our NSDA district schools and schools whose tournaments we plan attend this year. Finally, I will offer remaining spots to any remaining waitlisted schools.

Sweeps will be calculated with your top three entries, with at least one entry above the novice division.  

The first 2 rounds will be preset.  Beyond that, we will delay power-match.

We plan to offer a hospitality room and a concession stand and are likely to offer pizza at our concessions stand for students to purchase for lunch, if you / they choose.

Schedule is below.

Tournament Regulations:

1.  We will debate the 2022-2023 Emerging Technologies topic.

2. The tournament will be CX style with 8-3-5 time constraints. Prep time will be 8 minutes.

3. We will not follow KSHSAA guidelines concerning wireless access. You may use email to send evidence to the other team and/or the judge(s). Whatever mechanism you choose to use, flashing is on prep time.

4. NOVICE AFFIRMATIVE CASE AREA LIMITATIONS are the NDCA packet. 

5.   Coaches and sponsors will be used to judge if necessary.  If you are sending a 

sponsor, please let them know that they are on standby to judge and that if they refuse a ballot, the judge will be removed from a round their teams are debating in and their team will receive a 3-4 loss.

6.  Any team more than 10 minutes late to a round through no fault of the tournament will be forfeited with a 3­-4 loss.

 7. Tournament management reserves the right to handle difficulties in a way that seems fair to us.