East Kansas District Qualifier

for the 2026 National Tournament

Policy Debate Information

Tournament Schedule

Prelim 1 - Friday 3:30pm
Prelim 2 - Friday 5:30pm
Prelim 3 - Friday 7:30pm

Prelim 4 - Saturday 8:00am
Elim 1 - Saturday 10:30am
Elim 2 - Saturday 1:00pm
Elim 3 - Saturday 3:30pm
Elim 4 - Saturday 6:00pm

Tournament Format

1) All teams will compete in four preliminary rounds. Rounds 1 and 2 are preset, and rounds 3 and 4 are direct power matched according to the procedures in the Unified Manual.

2) Each preliminary round will have one judge, who will select a winning team and award speaker points to each debater using a 20-30 scale with 0.1 point steps.

3) All teams with a 4-0 or 3-1 record will clear to a single elimination bracket, regardless of the number of teams. The first elimination round may be a quarterfinal or an octafinal.

4) If 2 qualifiers: the winners of the semifinal round are the national qualifiers. If 3 qualifiers: the winners of the semifinal round are national qualifiers, and the losers in the semifinal round will debate a runoff for the third spot.

5) Elimination debates will have a panel of 3 judges.

Judge Quota

All schools must bring 1 judge per entry. Judge shifts may be used to divide up the weekend, but all judging requirements run through the entire weekend, even if your school's teams have been eliminated from competition. We will work to aggressively identify and free any judges who cannot see any remaining debates.

We will begin pairing elimination rounds with the setting that judges may not see a team twice, even from prelims, but we reserve the right to relax this restriction if needed.

Each school's head coach will be working in some capacity at the tournament, and will serve as a last-resort backup judge. Head coaches should generally not be used to cover your judge quota.