Speech Info & Rules

ALL EVENTS WILL BE CONDUCTED SYNCHRONOUSLY (LIVE) VIA NSDA CAMPUS EXCEPT FOR DUO.

All events will follow PHSSL rules - which can be found at https://www.phssl.org/documents-forms/

-Extemp rounds will alternate between domestic and international

-Impromptu will follow the 7 minute format

Speech Seeding for Preliminary Rounds (all Speech events):

1. Ranks

2. Reciprocal Ranks

3. Judges Preference

4. Opponent Ranks

This metric is calculated by the average seeds of the opponents that a competitor has faced, which recalculates every round as seeds change.  It serves to weight the total wins/losses that a debater receive by the difficulty (i.e. seed) of their opponents.  

Speech Scheduling & Powerpairing (all Speech events with more than 2 rooms)

We will have 3 guaranteed rounds for all competitors. There will be a tentative 4th round if time permits that will consist of all competitors, but we are prioritizing staying on schedule more so than fitting in additional rounds. A guaranteed final round will be held for the top 6 competitors (unless there are ties) in each event that has more than 2 rooms.

The last Prelim Round (either Round 3 or Round 4) will be snaked (see below for an explanation on snaked rounds). To calculate the break to Finals, the Preliminary Seeding methodology will be used with the following modifications:

1. Rankings Modifier: The snaked round will be weighted 1.5x if there are 3 preliminary rounds or 2x if there are 4 preliminary rounds.

2. Recips Modifier: The snaked round will be weighted 1.5x if there are 3 preliminary rounds or 2x if there are 4 preliminary rounds.

Snaked Rounds:

As an example, assume there are 4 rooms of Poetry, rooms A, B, C, and D, and 16 competitors, labeled 1-16 by their rank.  For this example we're going to assume all are from different schools.  The competitors would be placed as follows:

Room A would be competitors 1, 8, 9, 16

Room B would be competitors 2, 7, 10, 15

Room C would be competitors 3, 6, 11, 14

Room D would be competitors 4, 5, 12, 13

The actual pairings are not going to quite follow this because there is still school protection on, but it should closely mimic the snaked round above.

The reason it is called a snake is that if you follow the ranks up and down, in order, they make a snake shape.