Dear colleagues,

The Lubbock High School Speech and Debate team is pleased to invite your team to our 2024 TFA Qualifying Tournament. Because we are unsure of our judge pool, our goal is to offer a small but competitive tournament. If we get closer to the tournament and find that we are doing well with judges, we’ll be happy to accommodate more entries. I’m optimistic that will happen as our parent volunteer base has been expanding.

As you begin to make plans to attend, please keep the following in mind:

Judges: We are running this tournament as primarily 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 may be excluded from the tournament. If we need you and cannot find you, you run the risk of having your team disqualified from the tournament. Also, if you can enter multiple judges, we’ll prioritize your school’s entries for admitting folks off the waitlist.

Hospitality:

$5 Breakfastmeal ticket will be good for breakfast items from the concession stand, a drink, etc.. It will be a good deal and may help wake students up after an early morning bus ride.

$10 Lunchmeal ticket will provide folks with their choice of lunch from a couple of different food trucks who will be stationed in the parking lot just outside the cafeteria. We'll provide more details as we learn them.

I believe these meal tickets can be purchased on site. Beyond that, we'll offer a concession stand with snacks throughout the day and a complimentary hospitality room for coaches and judges--with snacks and meals.

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.

Debate: We’ll be using current TFA/NSDA resolutions.

CX Topic: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.

LD Topic: The United States ought to adopt a wealth tax.

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

LD will be flighted

Congress:

We will use the TFA Fall Docket.

Prelims: bills 21-25; Finals bills: 26-30

The pre-set order for prelims is: 24, 25, 22, 23, & 21

The pre-set order for finals is: 29, 30, 27, 26, & 28

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 and top 8 in congress will receive awards.

All semi-finalists and finalists in debate will receive awards

LHS Entry Notice: Pursuant to recent rules changes, Lubbock High will enter students in this tournament. We will limit entries to anyone on our team who has not already qualified for TFA state in any event.

Internet Access: We will do our best to provide guest WiFi. It has worked well for many people, most of the time; but not for everybody all of the time. Come prepared with hotspots, the ability to work offline, etc. We will not feel a panic if for some reason, WiFi is not available.

Tentative Schedule: We'll try to push things forward but reserve the right to fall behind. We will do our best to ensure that the speech events only have a total of 3 rounds. So, we'll either have 2 prelims and finals or 1 prelim, a semi final and a final round. Consult TFA rules for any questions about how that may play out. This is dependent on total number of entries.

Registration 7:00-7:45

8:00: Extemp Draw

8:30:Round 1 Debate/ Pattern A RD1

9:00: Congress Prelims

10:30: Debate Round 2/ Pattern B RD1

12:00: Extemp Draw

12:30: Debate Round 3/ Pattern A RD2/semis

1:00: Congress Finals

2:30: LD and CX Out-round 1/Pattern B RD 2/semis

4:30 or ASAP: LD and CX Out-round 2/ Pattern A Finals

6:30 or ASAP: Remaining debate out-rounds/Pattern B Finals

Pattern A: DI, Inf, POE, IX, DX, Duet

Pattern B: HI, OO, POI, Pro, Duo