TENTATIVE Schedule:

All times in EST

Friday:

12:00-4:00pm - Online Registration

4:30pm - District Meeting via zoom

Preset pairings will be released as soon as possible following the conclusion of the meeting.

Saturday:

9:00am - Round 1

Lunch Break

12:30pm - Round 2

3:45pm - Round 3

Sunday:

9:00am - Round 4

Lunch Break

12:30pm - Round 5, JV Elim 1

3:45pm - Round 6, JV Elim 2

6:00pm - Awards

H. TOURNAMENT PROCEDURES IN THE EVENT OF FEWER THAN SIXTEEN ENTRIES (Revised November 2023)

(1) The tournament will have six rounds of debate on the current national question.

(2) Each team is guaranteed an equal number of affirmative and negative rounds. If necessary, a bye will take place of either an aff or a negative side, but a team still cannot have more than 3 affirmative or negative rounds.

(3) No team will meet twice during the tournament.

(4) All debates shall use the format specified by the standing rules of tournament procedure for the National Debate Tournament.

(5) Decisions may be revealed by judges at their discretion.

(6) Once a round has begun, a debater may not communicate with anyone except their partner, the members of the other team and the judges assigned to the round. Debaters MAY receive outside assistance in the event of a technical issue directly related to online competition, which threatens to substantially delay or end the debate, such as: audio-video issues, connection issues, or Zoom/platform related issues. In the event that outside assistance is needed, debaters should be transparent and notify the judges and opponents of the nature of the issue, who is assisting them, and how it is being resolved.

(7) Judges will be placed based on an ordinal preference system, after consideration of preclusions.

(8) In rounds with single judges, judges are expected to render a decision within 2:30 of the announced start time. In rounds with three judges, judges are expected to render a decision within 2:45 of the announced start time. If a judge is unable to make a decision within the appropriate time parameters for that round, the tab room should randomly decide the winner of that ballot by coin flip. If debates occur utilizing an online platform, the Tournament Director has the discretion to extend decision time in the event that Tech Time is utilized by any of the debaters or if a judge has a tech issue in a given debate. In the event that a team invokes tech time, or a judge has tech difficulties, the judge or other members of the panel should communicate the issue to the tab room immediately in order to minimize delays in the tournament schedule.

(9) All six rounds will be preset. These rounds will be paired according to the rank total method:

A. The District Committee will establish a deadline for team rankings. Each team entered will rank all teams submitting official entries (not including themselves). The District Committee will compile all rankings submitted by the deadline to establish a rank order for use in pairing the tournament. The highest and lowest ranks for each team will be dropped in preparing this composite ranking. In the event of a tie after dropping the highest and lowest ranks, the District Committee will continue to drop the highest and lowest ranks until the tie can be broken.

B. Pairings will be based on a system designed to equalize opponent strength as determined by ranking.

C. The sum total of opposition seeds for all teams will be roughly equivalent.

D. Affirmative and negative totals of opposition seeds will be roughly equivalent.

(10) For purposes of opponent wins when a bye is needed – the bye will count as X opp wins where X is the first four teams that have had the bye’s opponent wins divided by four.