NPDL Spring and Middle School Tournament

2025 — NSDA Campus, US

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NPDL Spring 2025

Middle School, Novice, and Open Parliamentary Debate Competition

March 8-9, 2025 on NSDA Campus

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ELIGIBILITY
- Every school may enter up to 8 teams per division; any additional teams will be waitlisted.
- Middle School division is for students grades 5th-8th. Novice and Open is for students grades 9th-12th.
- A novice debater is a 9th or 10th grade student who is in their first academic year of debate competition.
- Hybrid entries (two students from two unique schools, academies, or programs) are allowed.
- Programs not affiliated as NPDL member schools will be charged an additional $100 program fee if they have multiple entries.
- All students must be registered under their school, academy, or institutional affiliation.
- Students may choose their own display team name, subject to tournament approval.
- Hybrid teams of students from different schools should be registered using both school names.
- A homeschooled debater who affiliates with a member school is exempted from the $50 non-member fee.

MAVERICKS
- The NPDL defines Parliamentary Debate as a two-person team debate event, i.e. both partners should debate in every round.
- In unusual circumstances beyond the debaters’ control—where one partner is ill, has technological problems, or is otherwise unavailable—the team will forfeit up to one prelim round without further penalty and can still break to elimination rounds.
- If the team mavericks a second time, they will be auto-dropped from the tournament.

JUDGING

- The judge requirement is 1 judge per 2 entries, and the judge ratio is rounded up.
- The judge requirement is calculated separately for Open, Novice, and Middle School. For example, 3 Open entries and 5 Novice entires would be covered by a total of 5 judges (2 for Open, 3 for Novice).
- All schools must cover their full judge obligation for prelims, doubles, and octos. In addition, all Sunday judges from a given school are obligated for one round past the elimination of the last team from their school.
- Each team may strike up to 3 judges.

A judge must:
- be fluent in English,
- be familiar with the basic rules of parliamentary debate,
- have a device with a working camera and audio,
- have experience using video conferencing,
- be at least 18 years old and not be a current high school student,
- be reachable at all times by phone while they are in the judge pool.

After submitting their ballots, judges may (but are not required to) give brief feedback and/or disclose the winner of the round. Judges on a panel should decide independently and not confer with other judges about the result before all judges have submitted their ballots.

ROUND RULES
This tournament follows the NPDL Round Rules.
Partner prep only/no coach or team prep; 20 minutes prep time; no grace periods; POIs/POOs/POCs are allowed.

FEES & PAYMENTS
Middle School Parli: $40/entry
Novice Parli: $60/entry
Open Parli: $80/entry
NPDL non-member schools and private academies will be charged an additional $100 program fee if they have more than 1 entry.

The preferred method of payment is online through PayPal https://www.parliamentarydebate.org/payment. Please be sure to indicate the school name, and, if this is a partial payment, which team or judge obligation the payment is intended to cover.

If fees are a barrier to your participation, please email us at npdlboard@gmail.com explaining any extenuating circumstances and the level of support you'd need to participate in our tournament.

Fines
All fines must be cleared before elimination rounds are announced. Nuisance fines will be assessed for the following:
$50 fine - Team does not submit entry fees or hired judge fees prior to the posted deadline (if applicable)
$50 fine - Team has a judge add or change after the posted judge deadline
$50 fine - Team’s judge is more than ten minutes late to a round
$50 fine - Team’s judge requires tab staff intervention to set up or link a Tabroom.com account
$100 fine - Team’s judge misses a single round
$300 fine - Team’s judge is missing for more than one round (stacks on previous fine)