Tournament Format/Rules

Students at this tournament will give an extemporaneous speech on a current topic. Each student will receive 30 minutes of prep time and then immediately report to their speaking room. We will utilize all NSDA rules for extemporaneous speaking.

Operationally, this will run as a "debate" tournament. Each preliminary round will be triple-flighted (elim rounds will either be double-flighted or single-flighted). In each prelim round, students will receive either a Win or a Loss as they compete against one student in their flight. Students will also receive speaker points. After the first two randomly preset preliminary rounds, we will power-match (hi/lo) the remainder of the preliminary rounds. After the conclusion of the preliminaries, we will seed the entire tournament. We will break the amount of entries to create an appropriate elimination round (e.g. octofinals would be 16 students, double-octofinals would be 32 students). In elimination rounds, there will be no speaker points and we will conduct a single-elimination tournament where students will speak head-to-head.

The students listed first will be the first speaker in the "round". In flighted rounds, this will create a maximum of six speakers per room, but debaters MUST speak in the order provided. For draw purposes, if you are flight A you are either Speaker 1 (if listed first) or Speaker 2 (if listed second). If you are flight B you are either Speaker 3 (if listed first) or Speaker 4 (if listed second)

Each round will have a topic theme and each two-speaker pairing will speak on the same topic. HOWEVER, they need not necessarily speak on opposite sides. Students will prepare their speeches independently, as is usual for extemporaneous speaking competitions.