Sunflower Invitational: Tournament Guidelines and Regulations

The Sunflower Invitational

January 6-7, 2017

Derby High School 

Tournament Guidelines and Regulations

1.  The resolution to be debated is Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its economic and / or diplomatic engagement with the People’s Republic of China.

2.  The tournament will be cross-examination style with 8-3-5 time limits.  Prep time is 5 minutes.

3.  Round I will be pre-set.  Subsequent rounds will be power-matched “high” vs “high”.  Each team will debate as close to 3 rounds affirmative or 3 rounds negative as is possible by the end of the 5^th preliminary round.  Brackets will be broken during elimination rounds.

TIE BREAKING PRIORITIES HAVE BEEN ADJUSTED TO ACCOMADATE BACK UP PROGRAM SEPARATE FROM TABROOM.COM (AS USED IN DCI TOURNAMENT):

Tie-Breaking Priorities:

Total Win/Loss

Total Team Ranks

Total Opposition Win/Loss

Total Team Speaker (Quality) Points

Total Opposition Team Speaker (Quality) Points

Total Team Speaker Points (Drop HIGH/LOW)

Judge Preference

Random (Coin Flip)

Speaker-Award Tie-Breaking Priorities:

Total Speaker (Quality) Points (Drop HIGH/LOW)

Total Individual Speaker (Quality) Points

Total Individual Ranks

Total Opposition Points

Total Speaker (Quality) Points (Dropu DOUBLE HIGH/LOW)

Wins

Oppoairion Wins

Random (Coin Flip}

4.  Entry fees are $10.00 per team.  Registration deadline is December 10.  Cancellations after January 4th are non-refundable.

5.  In each division, the top sixteen teams will receive medals.  The top 10 speakers will receive medals.

6.  Each school is REQUIRED to bring one ADULT judge for every 2 teams (or portion thereof) entered in the tournament.  Please bring judges who will write educational and fair ballots.  Failure to bring judges disqualifies your teams from debating.  Judges are obligated to judge one round beyond when their school’s teams are finished in the tournament.

7.  Any team more than 10 minutes late to a round through no fault of the tournament will be forfeited with a 3-4 loss.

8.  Schools are limited to entering three teams total, regardless of which divisions those teams are entered in.  If initially requested, a fourth team will be “wait listed”.  If a fourth team can be given to schools requesting, first registered, first served, this will be done as soon as space availability can be determined.

9.  Judges will be considered “clean” at the beginning of elimination rounds and may see a team a second time in elimination rounds.

10.  The tab room itself will be closed.  Results and ballots will be available to coaches and sponsors at a designated location after each round has been tabulated and audited, but the tabulation area will be off limits during the tabulation process.  This will help us to run the tournament more smoothly.  At appropriate intervals, schedules will be posted online; but results will ONLY be made available to head coaches (or designated sponsors) as appropriate intervals.

11.  Tournament management reserves the right to handle difficulties in a way that seems fair to us.  A tournament Conflict Resolution Committee will be in place to adjudicate all conflicts. 

A NOTE ABOUT POWER-MATCHING:

We are slated to ramdomly pair round 1, then power-match HIGH vs HIGH starting with round 2 and thereafter.  In order for this to happen, we will need every team and every judge to work cooperatively to get rounds started on time, end on time, AND judges MUST REFRAIN FROM ORAL CRITIQUES until after their decision has been rendered AND the ballot has been returned to the ballot area.