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Dear Forensic Coaches, Judges, and Participants:

On behalf of the Borah High Debate Team, it is our pleasure to invite you to the 10^th Annual Borah Novice Debate Tournament at Borah High School on Friday, October 17th, 2025.

In debate events, we will offer Congressional Debate, World Schools Debate, Lincoln-Douglas Debate and Public Forum Debate. In LD and PF, we will be offering four rounds of debate. In Congressional Debate, we will hold two preliminary sessions.

Eligibility

Team Eligibility

Only teams representing degree-issuing high schools are eligible to register. We will not accept independent entries, camp entries, or for-profit club entries. Additionally, due to liability reasons, no teams will be accepted into the tournament without a responsible adult chaperone available for the duration of the tournament. An adult, for these purposes, is defined as someone twenty-one years of age or older, who is presumably an employee of the team’s school or a parent. The contact information for this adult must be given to the Tab Room at registration.

Student Eligibility

This is a novice only tournament. As such only novice debaters may compete. For this tournament a “novice” is defined as a first year debate student who has never competed in a forensics tournament (speech or debate) and has not attended any debate instructional camps. If you have questions about eligibility please email us at Donald.drobny@boiseschools.org

Judging

This tournament utilized experienced varsity debaters as judges. We believe this gives varsity debaters the ability to see rounds from the judge’s perspective as well as fostering compassion for the role of judges. Varsity students are expected to give valuable, encouraging feedback to the students they judge.

By registering a judge, a team is noting that the judge is qualified. Please keep in mind that a qualified judge understands that activity and is either experienced in sitting in the back of the room with a ballot and/or flow pad, or has been carefully trained by the team they are accompanying. A qualified judge knows how to assign ranks or wins/losses, speaker points, and knows how to fill out a ballot.

Teams should bring at least the following number of qualified judges:

World Schools Debate: 1 Judge for every 2 teams

Public Forum: 1 Judge for every 4 teams

Lincoln-Douglas: 1 Judge for every 4 entries

Congressional Debate: 1 Judge covers 5 entries

Teams that have difficulty covering their entries should reach out to tournament management. In the past we have had plenty of varsity student judges to cover all entries so teams should not have to drop entries. Please reach out with questions.

Coaches may be asked to fulfill valuable tournament roles including room/hall checks, monitoring prep rooms, and other roles.

If you need any additional information, please email us atDonald.drobny@boiseschools.org .

Best,

Donnie Drobny

Tournament Director