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Wichita East Aces
Debate Invitational 2025

Wichita East High School

2301 E. Douglas Ave., Wichita, KS, 67211

October 10th and 11th, 2025

We invite you to attend the Wichita East Ace Debate Invitational on October 10th and 11th, 2025. This tournament is an official Debate Coach’s Invitational bid tournament. We will offer a 2-day Open division and single day Junior Varsity and Novice Divisions, if desired.

Novice division will take place Saturday only and will be limited to students who have not participated in debate prior to this season. It will be four rounds. In this division, medals will be given to the top 8 teams. We will be a caselist tournament, meaning that your novices will be limited to the NDCA novice evidence packet for this division. If schools are found to be in violation of evidence packet rules, they will be given a loss in an individual debate round. Continued violation of rules will result in disqualification.

Junior Varsity division is available for students who are only able to debate on Saturday. They will have four rounds of standard debate. If our numbers allow, we will medal the top 8 teams in Junior Varsity.

Open division is meant for students who are less experienced or less technical than Varsity teams. This is the first year we are offering a competitive two-day tournament with elimination rounds for these debaters. We will not overlap DCI judging pools unless absolutely necessary, so please consider that we will be using parents in this pool. Open division will have five pre-elimination rounds– three on Friday, two on Saturday– then break into semifinal elimination rounds.

Varsity division is a DCI qualifying division. There will be five rounds of debate, breaking to quarter finals on Saturday. Please bring one judge per two entries, or fraction thereof. I am trusting you to evaluate the quality of judge for this division. I am asking that you bring high-quality judges to evaluate these debates fairly and equitably.

All divisions will be power-matched with Friday rounds being pre-set. Sweepstakes will be based on the school with the best four-team record, with at least one team in at least two divisions. Schools should feel free to enter as many teams as they like in the open, JV, and novice divisions. Please only enter four entries in varsity, unless otherwise negotiated with the tournament. While we have a large squad, their resources are severely limited to parents, siblings, and teachers who have no debate experience. In an effort to provide high-quality judging, we ask that you bring judges. We will require that you provide one judge per two teams entered to our tournament.

Payment must be submitted with the attached invoice from tabroom.com. Novice and JV entries are $7, Open is $10, Varsity/DCI will be $12. Please make payments promptly, as your contribution helps us provide a high-quality tournament experience.

Hannah Erdman

Wichita East High School – Head Speech & Debate Coach
herdman@usd259.net

Tournament Guidelines

1. The tournament will be cross-examination style with 8-3-5 time limits with 8 minutes of prep time.

2. The resolution being debated is Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly increase its exploration and/or development of the Arctic.

3. Friday rounds in Open and Varsity will be pre-set. All rounds following will be directly powermatched. We will do our best to allow for two pre-set rounds in Novice and JV on Saturday with direct powermatching to happen, but tournament delays may cause delayed power match.

4. Every school entered in the tournament is required to have a responsible adult in charge, on site for the full day. Coaches and sponsors will be asked to judge if necessary.

5. Novice and JV entries are $7, Open is $10, Varsity/DCI will be $12. Please make payments promptly, as your contribution helps us provide a high-quality tournament experience. Registration deadline will be October 6th with non-refundable cancellations beginning October 9th.

6. All Novice, JV, and Open ballots will be done on paper. DCI ballots will be done online with an option for a verbal RFD to be given at the end of round.

7. All elimination rounds will be determined by a coin flip.

8. Tournament management reserves the right to handle difficulties, or things otherwise not clarified in the invitation, in a way that seems fair to us.

9. Please be respectful to all of our tournament spaces– our teachers are wonderful people for allowing us to use their rooms. Our administration is kind enough to allow access to the facilities.

10. Please no Mavericks or non-school affiliated entries.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

(Projected / Tentative)

This schedule is subject to change with entry numbers.