A List of Information/Entry Requirements

REGISTRATION POLICY

Registration for this tournament is open ONLY to head coaches of record at the TFL member school. Your registration request must be approved by the tournament director. TFL will not allow students or parents access to the registration portion of this site. Please make sure that the faculty coach of record for your school is applying for registration permission. It will be checked against TFL records before you are allowed to complete the registration process.

Junior Varsity events (Declamation, JV Lincoln Douglas, JV Public Forum, JV Congress) are open to any student in their first two years of competition.  Teams have unlimited entries in this division, space permitting.

Varsity or Open events (all events listed above) require students to qualify to participate or to apply as one of five wild card entries from their school.  (See the TFL Qualification Procedures document posted to the right.)  Students registering in these events will be placed on the wait list until their eligibility and qualification status is verified by the TFL Executive Committee.

COACH SUPERVISION RULE

This policy, found on page 3 of the state manual will be strictly enforced: "At minimum, the Head Coach of Record must be present with his or her school for the entire duration of the tournament. That coach is also required to be present for final tournament registration. If anyone other than the official head coach will be supervising the team, the school must present the TFL Executive Committee a letter to that effect signed by both the head coach and school principal. If any team is found at any time without the coach of record or officially approved adult chaperone on campus during tournament hours, the entire school will be disqualified from the tournament and a letter will be written to the school principal. All teams must be supervised at all times while they are on the host campus."

FEES

SCHOOL FEE: Teams who have not yet paid their TFL dues for the year will pay $75 in dues in addition to other applicable tournament fees. Teams who paid their TFL dues prior to the tournament will not owe a school fee.

STUDENT ENTRY FEES: $25 per student entry. A Duo Interpretation team or a Public Forum team would be $50.

JUDGE BOND: Each school will submit a check separate from registration fees in the amount of $200 to be held as a JUDGE BOND. This check will be returned to the school un-cashed at the end of the tournament if all judges from the school show up for all of their assigned rounds.

HIRED JUDGE FEES: $80 per PF or IE judge. There are no congress or LD judges for hire. You must meet your congress and LD judge obligation or drop the proportionate number of congress entries. Uncovered LD and Congress judges will show a $400 penalty per judge on the invoice until the judge is provided or the proportionate number of entries are dropped.

JUDGE DROP FEES: Teams who drop judges after Wednesday, April 11 will be charged the hired judge fee above plus a $100 judge drop fee. Please replace any dropped judges.

CONTESTANT DROP FEES: There will be no drop contestant fees through Wednesday, April 11 at 5 PM. After Wednesday, April 11, drops will simply pay their original registration fee as long as the drop is made on Tabroom or reported to the Tournament Director.. However, drops that are unreported once the tournament begins will be assessed a $100 penalty per drop.

JUDGE QUOTAS

NOTE:  ALL JUDGE QUOTAS ARE FOR THE ENTIRE TWO DAY DURATION OF THE TOURNAMENT.   
SINGLE DAY JUDGES WILL ONLY COUNT AS A HALF JUDGE AND MUST BE COMPLEMENTED WITH A DIFFERENT NAME FOR THE OTHER DAY IN ORDER TO RECEIVE FULL JUDGE CREDIT.

LINCOLN DOUGLAS: 1 judge per 2 LD debaters or fraction thereof.  LD judges may NOT be hired.

PUBLIC FORUM: 1 judge per 2 PF teams or fraction thereof.  Hired Public Forum judges are $80 each.

SPEECH/INTERP EVENTS: 1 judge per 5 individual entries. Double entries count as two entries toward this quota. Duo teams count as one entry toward this quota   Hired speech judges are $80 each.

CONGRESS: 1 judge per ten congress entries. Schools with over 10 entries are required to make one of their judges a parliamentarian. Congress judges may NOT be hired.  Congress judges may also be asked to judge LD, PF or Speech/Interp, depending on the number of congress chambers.

No high school students may be used as judges during the state championship tournament.

Last year's high school graduates cannot judge the event in which they competed last year unless there is a JV division of that event.  They may, however, be called on to judge events in which they did not compete last year.  When listing judges, coaches must indicate any judges wo are in their first year out of high school as well as the event(s) in which they competed last year.All school judges are required to be available for the entire tournament, including all elimination rounds through finals.

DOUBLE ENTRY POLICY

There will be no triple entry allowed at the TFL State Championship. However, double entry will be allowed as follows:

LD, PUBLIC FORUM AND CONGRESS: No double entry allowed.

SPEECH/INTERP EVENTS: We will allow double entry for any student meeting bid/qualification requirements in BOTH events as long as the students know that they must move quickly to their second event and the tournament cannot be held up by students who have double entered.  It is recommended that students sign the boards in both of their rooms or check in with the judges in both rooms before starting their first event.  TFL accepts no responsibility for students who double enter and miss a round in one of their events.

EVENT RULES

Complete event descriptions and rules can be found in the TFL Tournament Manual posted to the right. Please note that we will be using the March-April Lincoln-Douglas topic and the March Public forum topic. 

SWEEPSTAKES & TROPHY POLICY

Please carefully read TFL's Sweepstakes policy on pages 23-24 of the TFL Tournament Manual.  Sweepstakes is now calculated with half of the points coming from debate events and half coming from speech events using a weighted percentage derived from a team's raw sweepstakes points.  

Trophies will only be offered in events with 6 or more entries from at least two schools.  The number of trophies offered will not exceed 50 percent of the field entered.

Sweepstakes points will be offered in all events that are held this year.

FINAL REGISTRATION

Tabroom will close for adds Wednesday, April 3 but will remain open for drops until 9 PM Friday, April 5.  All drops should be entered by that time.  You may download all school codes and other relevant information from Tabroom Friday evening.  Each school must check in with the TFL treasurer to pay all fees prior to the opening assembly.  There will be no formalized final registration other than the requirement to pay fees. Please note: no team may participate in Round One before checking in and paying all fees that are due.

POLICY REGARDING OBSERVERS IN ROUNDS

All rounds at the TFL State Tournament are open to observers. Visitors (observers) will be allowed in all rounds of each event until the room reaches capacity, as long as the judges and contestants have an unobstructed area reserved in which no visitor can see the ballots being written by judges.  Rounds may not be observed by students who are still in competition or judges who are judging that event and have the round off.