Registration Information

Registration:

Registration will occur through Tabroom.com. All announcements, hired judge requests, and other relevant information will be communicated through this platform, and we encourage all participants (coaches, judges, and students) to sign up for individualized text and/or email alerts to ensure a smooth tournament.

 Event Location: The tournament will be hosted online, using Tabroom.com as tabulation software. We are going to use NSDA Campus. 

Under normal circumstances, the tournament would have been hosted at DC International School’s beautiful new campus, at 1600 Main Dr. NW in Washington D.C. DCI renovated part of the former Walter Reed Medical Center and is a gorgeous campus with ample parking and space for our competition. The school is walkable to multiple metro stations and bus lines, and is close to many of the recommended hotels, while being far enough from downtown to avoid traffic and hotel mark-ups.

Chaperoning Information:

Students competing in the Urban Debate Dragon Invitational must provide the contact information of a legally responsible Adult Coach who is available during the entire tournament. This individual is expected to have the phone numbers of all of their competitors and their parents in case anything goes wrong during the competition. During social distancing pre-cautions, I realize that many teams will be competing from different places and have a patchwork of local health guidelines, but this isn’t negotiable.

 Registration Timeline:

Given the nature of online competition, we expect that registration will be robust and rapid, so sign up as soon as possible. 

Teams must convert TBDs into actual names and provide judges (able to be amended later if needed) ASAP.

Initial Entry Restrictions:

We don't plan on instituting any entry restrictions at the moment. However, teams must provide experienced judging or pay for hired judging. The availability of quality judging is the single largest barrier to entry for teams debating online. There is a higher standard and expectation for adjudication as a tournament awarding a TOC bid. Thus, every round will be judged by an experienced judge. This includes JV and Novice debates, who deserve high quality feedback and the ability to improve just as much as current Varsity entries. We’ll discuss this more below under “Judging Information.”

The tournament will actively recruit competitive attendance from urban debate leagues from around the nation and will save some space in the tournament for these entries. We will also ensure that programs that attended at least two of the following last year will have space for some entries in the tournament: Georgetown Day School, Pennsbury Falcon, NY Fall Face-Off, Lexington. We love competing regionally and are strong advocates for regional debate and want to make sure it thrives despite the pandemic.