North Texas Longhorns District Qualifier

for the 2021 National Tournament

Debate Events

Member schools of the North Texas Longhorn NSDA District are invited to compete in the debate portion of the district tournament. The following paragraphs will help with the details of the event.

DATE & LOCATION

Competitions in Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, and Public Forum debate will be offered on  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, February 25-27.   The tournament will be held online using the Tabroom.com website and NSDA Campus as the tournament competition platform

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Member schools may enter up to four entries in any of the three debate categories. Schools must have entries available in their allotted amount based on members and degrees. Public Forum and Policy debate teams count as one entry. Entries must adhere to double entry guidelines established by the NSDA.

You must notify the district chair (David Huston) by February 18 of your intent to enter the debate portion of the tournament.  You may do so by entering students on this website. That intent should include the names of your students. Other procedures will follow the conducting of debate events as described in the District Tournament Manual (Pilot).  If your students have entered or are planning to enter the individual events or Congress portions of the tournament, they must also complete the single entry letter of intent. You may find that letter on the NSDA website. REMEMBER: STUDENTS MAY ONLY ENTER TWO EVENTS IN DEBATE OR INDIVIDUAL EVENTS. IF YOU HAVE A STUDENT WHO IS PLANNING TO COMPETE IN TWO INDIVIDUAL EVENTS, THEY MAY NOT ENTER THE DEBATE PORTION OF THE DISTRICT TOURNAMENT. 

 The District Tournament manual has been amended to require an audit committee and a posting of results for all rounds. Coaches will ultimately be responsible for the accuracy of the results. We will be following these new requirements and procedures. 

Special tabulation information: We are now all familiar with the online balloting system, especially for debate, using the tabroom.com website. At the end of each round, coaches will be able to see ballots and results by logging on to the website. There is a built in audit system for the website that may supercede the need for an audit committee.  We will follow the procedures as outlined in the High School Unified Operations Manual (Pilot).  You may find the pilot manual on the NSDA website. 

Pilot Rules in Debate

We have again been asked to serve as a pilot rules district for the tournament this year. So, what does that mean? In individual events, the rules follow the California Plan pretty closely. The major difference is that none of the prelims are power matched. 

Debate, however, is very different. All debate contestants will participate in a minimum of four rounds of preliminary competition. All contestants with a 3-1 record or better will participate in the appropriate level of double elimination round. Brackets will not be broken in the elimination rounds. Contestants will not be paired against other contestants from their own schools in the preliminary rounds. Since we will not know until we know the entry numbers how many qualifiers  we will have this year, and are using a winners/losers bracket format, we are probably looking at 4-5 elimination rounds in the three debate events. All of that will be dependent on the number of entries in each category.

In other words, the tournament will run very similar to the debate tournaments we attend every weekend. The Unified Manual for the Pilot Rules does explain the procedures. We anticipate questions and will do the best we can to provide answers. 

ENTRY FEES

All fees are posted on the fee information page. Please follow the procedures to pay your fees. 

JUDGES

All coaches are encouraged to submit names for possible judges to the district committee. The district committee, will be responsible for the procurement of judges for the tournament. If you have individuals wishing to be in the judge pool for the tournament, please give their names and contact information to one of the district committee. 

Please note: Because we have had difficulty in procuring judges in recent years, the district committee has determined that each school must be willing to provide up to two rounds of judging for each of the individual events and debate tournaments. Please enter that judge's name(s) on the appropriate part of this website. We will use these judges only when our hired judge pool has been exhausted or those individuals can no longer judge entries that are left in the tournament. Judges affiliated with schools may be hired by the tournament, but may not be counted against a school's obligation unless those persons are willing to be named as the school's designated judge.

 TOPICS WE WILL USE

POLICY DEBATE: Resolved: The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following: forensic science, policing, sentencing

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS: Resolved: States ought to ban lethal autonomous weapons

PUBLIC FORUM: Resolved: On balance, the benefits of urbanization in West Africa outweigh the harms

 STUDENT & COACH HOSPITALITY

Since we will be online this year, you are responsible for your own hospitality. Yep, you can raid your own refrigerator.

 TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

 The schedule can be found under the "Tentative Schedule" link on this website. We will follow a similar format and schedule as we have in previous years. The schedule calls for two rounds of preliminary round debates on Thursday and Friday night in all three forms of debate. We will have the first elimination round of LD/PF debates on Friday night as well. On Saturday, the tournament will continue with elimination rounds in all forms of debate. We may amend this schedule as we move forward depending on the number of elimination rounds we need. Please ask questions about the schedule if you have them.