Magnolia District Qualifier

for the 2026 National Tournament

2. Official Rules (NSDA Unified Manual)

1. NSDA Unified Manual

The information in this document is presented as a guide, not a comprehensive rule book. Coaches and competing students should be sure to read and review the relevant sections of the NSDA Unified Manual which can be found here: https://www.speechanddebate.org/high-school-unified-manual/.

In the most recent version of the manual (2026.1.4), the event rules start on page 30.

Guidelines for the district qualifier tournaments start on page 81.

In general, where decisions are left up to individual districts, our decision can be found in the document you’re reading right now. Some specifics of the rules in which we don’t have any choice are glossed over in this document, but can be found in the Unified Manual.

For example, there are very specific rules for paneling Speech elimination rounds, calculating ranks, and determining qualifiers on pp. 116-118 of the Unified Manual that differ from what we are used to in the MHSAA rulebook. I haven’t included all of those details below. Tabroom’s settings will handle most of them automatically anyway, but it’s a good idea for all coaches to review those in order to know what to expect, especially because the rules differ from MHSAA.