On behalf of the staff at Lincoln High, I would like to cordially invite you to the Silver Bowl Tournament, January 12^th and 13^th, 2017. PLEASE read the entire invitation carefully. There are at least 3 significant changes this year. 

Structure - We will run 3 prelims of speech with Finals for the Top 6 and Honor Finals for 7-12. We will offer Novice, Junior Varsity, and Varsity in Policy and Public Forum debate. We will have a Varsity and Novice division in LD.  Please be sure to check out the events page for specific guidelines when entering students in events. If numbers do not warrant some divisions they will be collapsed.Please have novices marked in Tabroom, so we can still offer them awards if do collapse the divisions. 

Speech Schedule  All three prelim rounds and Finals of speech will happen Friday, January 12^th. The awards will still be given on Saturday, January 13^th at the Awards Ceremony. Change 1 – I want to try offering a Novice Informative division this year since we offer one in Oratory and Extemp. Please double check the rules for novice entries and place students accordingly. If there is not enough for at least 2 sections of Novice and 2 sections of varsity, then we will run them all together.

Varsity Policy Schedule -Change 2 – Varsity policy will start Friday night. This is the only debate event on Friday. All others are Saturday. The purpose of this change is to provide as many varsity policy rounds as possible at the tournament. A student entered in varsity policy cannot enter any other event. All students are guaranteed 5 rounds. We will break to Semi-finals, no matter what, and we will have a final round. By starting on Friday, we will still have all of these policy rounds in and done before the awards at 5:00 pm.

Congress – change 3 – We would like to offer congressional debate this year on Friday opposite speech events. The docket will be available starting December 4^th. It will be bills pulled from the NSDA released packets. If you would like to submit legislation for consideration, that must be done by December 8^th. All legislation must be formatted to NSDA Guidelines for consideration. There is no entry fee for congress entries, but they also will not count towards sweepstakes. If there is interest, this may become a permanent event at Silver Bowl. Please indicate novice or varsity on the registration. If possible we will try to have two houses. Please add a note to your judges if there are any that would be willing to judge Congress. The judges will only judge for half the session.

Debate . Varsity/Novice LD, Varsity/JV/Novice PFO, and  JV/Novice Policy will only take place on Saturday. LD and PFO will have 5 Prelim rounds – Varsity/JV will break to Semi-Finals, and Novice will break to finals. JV and Novice Policy will have 5 prelim rounds. The hope is that we do not have to flight any event this year. If we do flight an event, a judge will still only judge 1 flight.

JUDGE NOTE – With the overlap of policy and speech events, this may make it more difficult for teams to provide all judges – solution – enter the judge in Varsity Policy, and note that they were also meant to cover speech entries. The tournament will move them as needed Friday night, and you will not have to find another judge for that spot on Friday.

 All judges are obligated to judge one round beyond their team’s elimination. It is $100 to hire a speech judge and $150 to hire a debate judge. We really don’t want to take your money, so please make every effort possible to bring judges. 

Now the regular details… We will be running all events at Lincoln High School which is located on the southeast side of Sioux Falls at the intersection of Cliff Avenue and 41^st Street. The staff would appreciate if upon arrival you would go directly to the auditorium.  Note the schedule.  Three rounds of individual events, five rounds of debate, and finals require you to be on time and keep everyone else on time.

   A school’s judging obligation is one for every 5 entries in individual events or fraction thereof.  A limited number of individual event judges are available for hire.  In debate, a school must provide a qualified adult judge for every two entries. A school must provide a qualified adult judge for every two Lincoln Douglas debaters. 

 All Fees will be finalized as of Thursday, January 11 at 5:00 pm.

We look forward to seeing you and your team at Silver Bowl!

Sincerely,

Tony Martinet - Head Debate Coach

Tony Welter - Assistant Debate Coach

Kit Rodgers - Head Interp Coach