We look forward to hosting you at the 5th annual Dripping Springs TFA Tiger Tussle. It is our goal to provide a pleasant tournament experience for all. This year's tournament will once again follow a hybrid format. The first 2 rounds of Varsity Debate Events (excluding Congress) will be hosted online via NSDA Campus. The rest of the tournament be hosted in person at Dripping Springs High School.

If you have speech and debate experience and would like to be hired as a judge, please complete this form: https://forms.gle/Vrf48XdfCfdj4nRv7.

Key Details:

-Our tournament is a TFA qualifier and will follow TFA rules.

-Our tournament will award NIETOC bids in relevant events based on the criteria detailed at https://nietoc.com/details-and-rules/.

-An adult affiliated with your school has to be present and available at all times throughout the tournament.

-Juniors or seniors with at least 250 NSDA points can be used to fulfill novice judging commitments. Ninth and tenth graders cannot be used to fulfill novice judging commitments under any circumstances.

-We will use online balloting through Tabroom.com throughout the tournament. This means all judges will need Tabroom.com accounts.

-We think Public Forum debate should be accessible to the general public, so we intend to use a mixture of paid and community judges for VPF and NPF. We are charging a smaller fee for PF judges in support of this philosophy.

-Novice Policy students are limited to the arguments in the 2024-2025 NDCA Novice Packet. Updated/new evidence is permitted, but the arguments must remain the same.

-To encourage participation in World Schools, we are do 2 things this year:

1. We are going to host a completely free Novice/Newcomer World Schools division. Starting at 8:30 am, we will host a free 2-hour teaching/training session for novices or newcomers who want to learn how to do World Schools. If there is enough interest, we will also host a free teaching/training session for coaches. After the training session, novices will compete in 3 impromptu rounds of World Schools Debate. These debates will most likely be judged by varsity World Schools debaters on our team. We will give out awards after these 3 rounds based on seeding. Again, the teaching/training session and the debate rounds will be completely free.
2. As we have done for the past few years, we will also allow each school to enter 1 varsity World Schools team for free. This includes the cost of a judge. Discounts for this will be recorded manually on your tournament invoice. If you enter more than 1 team, you will be expected to provide a judge or pay a missing judge fee.

-A novice is defined as a student in their first year of speech and debate competition. For example, a student who competed in PF as a freshman CANNOT compete in Novice Policy or Novice LD as a sophomore because that student is not a first-year competitor.

-Students from Dripping Springs High School will be permitted to enter and compete for TFA points.

Scheduling/Cross Entries:

-We will offer 4 prelim rounds in VCX, VLD, VPF, and WSD. To make this possible, Rounds 1 and 2 of VCX, VLD, VPF, and WSD will take place Friday night via NSDA Campus. The remaining rounds for these events will be held entirely in-person starting on Saturday.

-We will offer 3 prelim rounds in NCX, NLD, and PF.

-Section A includes Duo, Duet, HI, POI, and Poetry

-Section B includes DX, IX, NX, DI, Prose, Info, and OO

-Students in VCX, NCX, VLD, NLD, VPF, NPF, and Worlds will be permitted to cross-enter in Extemp. Debaters who cross-enter in another IE are doing so at their own risk. We will not delay rounds for cross-entries that are not Extemp-related.

-We will offer both Novice and Varsity Congress.

Elim Procedures:

-We will not break brackets in debate elims.

-Panels for TFA qualifying events will start in semis. If possible, we will panel debate quarters, but no guarantees.

-Except for novice events, we will not host debate elims that don't award TFA points, unless there is an unbreakable tie that justifies a partial elim. In the event that entries are too low to justify quarters, we will break straight to semis, which will take the place of quarters in the schedule. This means we will break to semis in CX, LD, and PF if there are only 10-15 entries. We will break straight to finals in World Schools if there are only 6-9 entries. Novice debate events will break straight to semis unless there are enough entries to justify quarters.

-We will only collapse Novice and Varsity divisions if collapsing is necessary to award any TFA points. We will not collapse the divisions if it simply means offering better points.

-IEs with 16 or fewer entries will break straight to finals after Round 2. In this case, Round 2 will take the place of Semis on the schedule.

Statement on Disclosure Norms:

-Under TFA rules adopted at the 2023 TSCA/TFA convention, judges in debate events will be instructed at this tournament to not decide rounds on the basis of whether or not pre-round disclosure took place. Disclosure of cases, while heavily encouraged, is at the discretion of individual competitors and coaches.