Welcome to the 12th Annual

Scottsdale Prep Congress (& HS BQ) Tournament

Saturday, September 27th, 2025

It is our incredible pleasure to annually host this tournament since 2013 (with no tournament in Fall 2020). We strive to balance being a welcoming first tournament of the Arizona season (and many people's first tournament ever), while also being one of the few Congress opportunities in Arizona to offer a Finals round, allowing the best competitors to face each other. We are pleased to announce that the Scottsdale Prep Congress is a Bid Tournament to the prestigious University of Kentucky Tournament of Champions in Congressional Debate. The TOP 6 FINALISTS in HS CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE (Senate Final) will receive a bid to the UKTOC.

Our tournament schedule is linked on the right page, as well as here to be accessible more easily on mobile web browsing.

A few things to consider this year:

• Lunch: We will have lunch (and other concessions) available for sale to students, as well as a catered coach/judge lounge. To help feed students lunch quickly (and get to their next round quickly), we ask competitors to pre-order/pre-pay for their lunch the morning of the tournament before the Opening Ceremony and Round 1. We will then give you a corresponding ticket for your meal type, so we can distribute lunches faster. Please ask your students to bring cash (smaller bills especially appreciated). We are unable to process digital payment.
• MS Big Questions Debate has been discontinued at the tournament this year, though we are still offering HS Big Questions.
• Judge Lounge: Our tournament has grown to the point that we are now too big for our historical judge lounge. Instead, we will be moving the judge lounge to the Library (turn right upon entering the front lobby of campus), which will provide more space and more comfortable seating. This also means moving the Ballot Table to be near the Library.
• HS Senate & HS House Final Rounds: Our HS Congress tournament is usually large enough to warrant a semifinals round, but time does not allow for one, while we prioritize limiting our tournament to a one-day tournament. As a result, our tournament is distinct in advancing the very highest-ranked competitors to the Senate Final (which is the real final round, eligible for TOC Bids) with the next highest-ranked students advancing to a House Final (consolation round) so that more students can experience meaningful debate and what it is like to debate in a Congress Final Round. By turning the Library into the Judge Lounge, the House Final will now be moved out of the Library and into a classroom. Priority seating in the House Final classroom will be reserved for the round's competitors and judges, which severely limits spectator seating. However, with the Senate Final taking place in the Theater's first couple of rows, there is plenty of spectator seating to watch the Senate final.
• MS Congress Final will take place in Room 102 (choir room provides some room for spectators to sit on the choir risers). As the middle school league is much smaller (both in total entries and number of schools competing), in years where we have had multiple middle school congress prelim chambers, we have been careful to balance multiple considerations for a fair and enjoyable experience for those in the final round. One team filling over half of the final round chamber creates a dynamic that is unwelcoming to competitors from smaller/developing teams ever coming back to our (or other tournaments). We value growing the league and students having positive experiences over exact brackets in middle school congress. As a result, while prelim rank performance is the primary criterion for determining who advances, there have been years where we use prudence in balancing the final round with more team diversity so that no team is more than half the final round chamber--particularly in a competitive event that is run through student voting procedures.
• Setting the Agenda / Caucusing / Docket Order: Unlike the ASDCA Winter Trophy and AIA State tournament, invitationals are not bound to the ASDCA rule about a preset docket order. While I respect the intentions of the recent ASDCA rule, I feel it is still important to give students some voice and experience in advocating and caucusing for a docket order that they wish to debate, while still trying to limit shutting new competitors/teams out of the conversation or having competitors waste time researching multiple pieces of legislation that will never get debated. As a result, we have predetermined three items eligible for debate within each session, but we will be allowing each chamber to determine the order in which they wish to debate them within each session. Legislation from one session (morning or afternoon) cannot carry over to a later session (afternoon or finals).
• Parliamentarian Judge Training: Tournaments need both Scorer judges and Parliamentarians to make the tournament happen. Each school attending needs to make sure at least one of their judges is trained to serve as a Parliamentarian (head judge of a chamber). The NSDA has offered thisresource. We are especially looking for qualified Parliamentarians with Presiding Officer experience to serve as a combined Parli/PO in the middle school chambers--please let me know if you're interested in PO-ing middle school (otherwise we will draft some folks into service).

• Congressional Questioning:
• High school congress competitors will utilize Direct Questioning (30-second blocks per questioner) for the entire tournament, both in prelims and finals. This will necessitate that student presiding officers keep a second separate precedence and recency list of questioners, in addition to their original precedence and recency list for speakers. Questioning does not count against your precedence/recency for speaking, nor vice versa.
• Middle school congress competitors will utilize Indirect Questioning (1 question per questioner, before the Presiding Officer selects a different questioner), the entire tournament, both in prelims and finals.

Please click to the right for additional information regarding Big Questions Debate, the Congress Docket, and the tournament schedule. Remind your judges that we need them through the entire tournament. No, we cannot dismiss judges early-- or at least not until all finals rounds have begun.

We are looking forward to a great tournament!

Sincerely,

Travis Clement, Tournament Director

Jonathan Daniel, Student Assistant Tournament Director

Scottsdale Prep Speech & Debate Team

Scottsdale Preparatory Academy

16537 N. 92nd Street

Scottsdale, AZ

tclement@scottsdaleprep.org

Google Voice Number for coaches to contact Travis Clement: 602-753-7406

(parents/competitors, please direct your inquiries to your coach who will contact me if needed)