North Texas Longhorns District Qualifier

for the 2023 National Tournament

Debate Information

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 Friday, and Saturday, March 3-4. The tournament will take place at Jasper High School 6800 Archgate Dr Plano, TX 75025

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 24 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 Unified High School Manual. 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 publish the results for each round once they are concluded. Coaches may then follow procedures outlined in the Unified Manual for protests or questions about rounds.

Debate Rules

There are no longer options for the conducting of rounds. The pilot rules we have been following for the past few years are now the rules that all districts must follow.

All debate contestants will participate in a minimum of four rounds of preliminary competition.Contestants will not be paired against other contestants from their own schools in the preliminary rounds. All contestants with a 3-1 record or better will participate in the appropriate level of double elimination rounds. Brackets will not be broken in the elimination rounds. As long as we have at least 10 entries in any debate event, we will have 3 qualifiers in each of the debate events. If we have similar numbers to what we had last year, expect 3-4 elimination rounds.

In other words, the tournament will run very similar to the debate tournaments we attend every weekend. The Unified Manual 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 members.

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:The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS: We will use the March/April topic

PUBLIC FORUM: We will use the March topic

STUDENT & COACH HOSPITALITY

We will have hospitality provided by the district committee. We may ask some of our member coaches to assist with that. We will have light concessions for the students. Once we get closer to the tournament, we will communicate specific plans to you.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

The schedule can be found under the "North Texas Longhorn District IE & Debate Tournament 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 Friday night in policy debate. If we can single flight LD/PF, we will have three rounds on Friday. On Saturday, we will continue with one or two prelim rounds, depending on the number we were able to complete on Friday night. All teams/individuals with a record of 3-1 or better will continue with elimination rounds. 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.