Full tournament website: https://hdshcinvitational.com/ Congress Ballots available here and Refund Info

Sweepstakes Results

A thank you from ASU

Hotel Info and Schedules available in the right-hand column

Dear High School Forensics Colleagues,

The Arizona State University Forensics Team cordially invites your team to attend the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication Invitational Tournament, January 5^th through January 7^th, 2018 on the Arizona State University Main Campus in Tempe, Arizona.

We are excited about the opportunity to host you on our campus. As the largest tournament in the state of Arizona, this tournament provides teams from all over the nation a chance to enjoy excellent competition in the Valley of the Sun in January. Last year, our tournament featured over 100 schools from more than 10 states, pushing the tournament over 1700 people.

Competition will feature six preliminary rounds of Policy, Public Forum, and Lincoln-Douglas debate. Congress competition will feature four preliminary assemblies and finals assemblies as entries warrant. There will be four preliminary rounds of speech and elimination rounds will begin with a quarterfinal round for events over 55 entries and a semifinal for events over 27 entries. Awards will be presented to all finalists, semifinalists, and quarterfinalists in each individual event, to each member of debate teams reaching the octafinal or double octafinal, and the top three speakers overall in individual events. For 2018, the the tournament will have Tournament of Champions bids for participants reaching the double-octafinals (Silver) and octafinals (Gold) of Public Forum, the semifinals of Policy Debate, and the finals in both Congressional Debate and Lincoln-Douglas. Arizona State is also a bid tournament for all Speech events hosted at the UK TOC, qualifications procedures are found here: http://www.uktoc.com/speech.html. Last year, Drama, Extemp, and Oratory produced Semifinals bids to the TOC, with all other events delivering finals bids. Finally, the tournament is also a qualifier for the 2018 NIETOC, which you can read more about here: http://www.nietoc.com/.  Last year, OO produced a quarterfinals bid to the NIETOC, with Drama, Humor and Duo offering bids for all semi-finalists.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS:

--All entries handled at asu.tabroom.com.

--All schools enter a waitlist, your entries will be removed from the waitlist and entered in the tournament upon receipt of registration fees (we will accept Purchase Orders)

--Any school paid in advance may register online the night before the tournament begins, bypassing in-person registration

--Congress may not double enter with any other events

--2 pieces of legislation per school, due by December 4^th

--We will have judge preferences for both Varsity LD and TOC Policy Debate.

--We will charge schools $20 per missed prelim ballot and will not clear students until the fees are paid.

--All questions should be directed to hdshcforensics@gmail.com

NEW THIS YEAR:

--3 day schedule – Friday morning through Sunday evening

--Double entry in speech and LD, PF, and Policy is permitted.

--PF Varsity will now have judge strikes for 15% of the pool

--To receive judge prefs in LD and Policy, ALL judges from your school must have philosophies on tabroom.com

--Hired Judges must have philosophies/paradigms on tabroom or they will not be paid

--If you have extra LD or Policy judges that you can bring that we can hire, we’ll pay them.

--Missing an elim ballot you are obligated for is now a $60 fine

--Added Informative and removed Expository in Speech events

--Novice division speech events, $5.

--ALL Novice events limited to students in 1^st calendar year of competition.

--No high school students can judge any event.

You should make your hotel reservations as early as possible as this is a busy time of year in Phoenix. For your convenience, we have negotiated tournament contracts for hotel accommodations at hotels nearby campus. We are finalizing hotel contracts, and we’ll post them to the website and update this invitation as those become available.

Also, we expect schools to cover all of their entry as we are typically tight on hired judges. We would much rather have your judges than your money, so please make every effort to cover your entry.

Due to limited space, entries will be taken on a first come, first served basis. Please enter early to ensure your students’ participation. Finally, in an effort to reduce printing and waste, we will make the tournament packets available online December 29 at our website (hdshcinvitational.com) and on Tabroom (asu.tabroom.com).

We look forward to hosting you in January!

Adam Symonds                               

Director of Forensics

Izak Dunn                                         John Grimm                                    

Assistant Director of Debate           Assistant Director of Speech          

Frankie Marchi                                 Kelsey Abele

Speech Assistant                             Hugh Downs School, PhD Student