Voices Round Robin

After a one year hiatus, the Voices Round Robin is back to continue a tradition started in 2005 designed to increase the profile of the Voices Foundation in the debate community and help raise funds to promote tournament and camp attendance for those in need. All entry fees go DIRECTLY towards funding a summer institute for someone who has the need, so all competitors contribute to the mission of Voices. 

Each year Voices really tries to provide a fun, educational, and experimental atmosphere for competitive debate and preparation for the Tournament of Champions with some of the best competitors from around the country. 

Previous Champions of the Round Robin include: 

2013-2014:  Ram Prasad, La Jolla

2012-2013:  Ed Hendrickson, The Meadows School

2010-2011:  Ben Sprung-Keyser and Jake Sonnenberg, Harvard-Westlake

2009-2010:  Catherine Tarsney, St Louis Park

2008-2009:  Daniel Garber, MVLA

2007-2008:  Daniel Khalessi, MVLA

2006-2007:  Daniel Moerner, MVLA

2004-2005:  Will Leiter, Monte Vista 

As in years past, Voices will also host an Educational Forum before the Final Round of the Round Robin designed to promote a competitor oriented discussion on the direction of the activity and the details of the topic moderated by a panel of debate educators with questions from the Round Robin and Tournament competitors.  Both the forum and the Round Robin Final Round will occur after the start of the formal Tournament on Saturday with the design that all in attendance at the Tournament will be able to watch these events. 

Previous Educational Forum Champions include: 

2013-2014:  Annie Kors, Harvard-Westlake

2012-2013:  Samir Reddy, Brophy College Prep

2010-2011:  Steven Adler, Mercer Island

2009-2010:  Erik Legried, The Blake School

2008-2009:  Catherine Tarsney, St. Louis Park 

This year, Panelists for the Educational Forum will be selected by nomination at the time of registration for the Voices Tournament.  Coaches and competitors are suggested to nominate individuals they feel have a strong interest in the direction of the LD Debate.  All contestants at the Round Robin and Tournament are eligible for nomination.  

RR Tournament Format/Structure: 

We anticipate 10-12 highly competitive debaters as participants.  Depending on the number we might change logistics slightly but the following elements will be incorporated into the tournament structure.   Competitors will be divided into two pods.  All rounds will be randomly paired and side locks will also be randomly drawn to ensure that rounds are as fair as possible.   The top two competitors from each Pod will advance to the Final Round to determine the Voices Champion.   

As always, the majority of rounds at the tournament will be TOC structured rounds following the traditional LD format.  It is our goal to ensure students have an opportunity to have rounds against TOC level competition with the TOC format.   

This year we will also continue our experiment with a new speech structure with the hopes of prompting a discussion on what changes, if any, might help further the quality of the event.   If the number of competitors prompt the need for a bye each round in each pod, interpod debates will occur between the two byes that follow this alternative format.  The Final Round of the Round Robin will also follow the alternative format.   Though we will be making some modifications to the new format and will send those out as soon as final decisions are made, the format used for the last Voices Round Robin is below.  Feel free to visitwww.voicesfoundation.org as videos from the last Round Robin using this format will be posted very soon.   

Voices will once again host an Educational Forum.  This year, the student panelists in the forum will be chosen through nominations of coaches/competitors at the Main Tournament Registration.  For contributing to Voices efforts through entry fees, we’d like to give all attendees the opportunity to nominate competitors they would like to see as panelists in the final discussion.   The focus of the discussion will be on the direction of the activity and all audience members, including a panel of judges, will ask questions of the student panel.   Thus, the audience will control the direction of the discussion.  Audience members and the judge panel will vote for the forum champion based upon their impression of the panelist responses.

Alternate Format used in all rounds last year:

1AC - 6

1NC - 7

2AC - 5

2NC - 7

1AR - 4

1NR - 3

2AR - 3

*Each debater had 8 minutes of flex-prep to use as they saw appropriate.