Tournament Information

Tournament Information

Team Selection Criteria

Each invited league will receive up to two entries for high school debate pairs to compete in the at the Urban Debate National Championship. It is the league’s responsibility to select competing teams. As you consider selection criteria, we recommend looking for hard-working and dedicated students who will give their all to the event.

Teams must consist of students who attend the same school. Qualifiers must have participated in at least one league sponsored tournaments during the current academic year. Our objective is to assemble the most dedicated debaters who participated in the urban debate network this year.

An additional entry will be reserved for the Debater of the Year and their partner if they have not already qualified. Debaters competing in additional slots must also meet the qualification requirements for the tournament. If there is an uneven number of teams entered, the Chicago Debates may be offered a third spot to ensure a balanced number of entries. Debaters competing in any of these additional slots must meet qualification requirements for the tournament.

Entry Deadlines

NAUDL will invite schools to the tournament on Tabroom.com based on qualifier information provided by leagues. Coaches can enter competitors and judges, but entries are not considered complete until all supporting forms and documents are received.

All coaches listed on the entry forms will be entered into the judging pool

All teams, coaches and administrators must finalize their registration on Tabroom.com no later than 5:00 pm Central Time on March 1st, 2024.

If changes or updates need to be made after entry forms are complete please email Luke Hill (lukehill@urbandebate.org)

Topic & Format

Students will debate the national high school policy debate topic for 2023-24

-Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.

Tournament rounds will follow the 8-3-5 cross-examination debate format with 8 minutes of preparation time allocated to each team during the debate.

Preliminary Rounds

• Each team will compete in 6 preliminary debates, after which the top 16 teams* will participate in elimination rounds. (See the note about division sizes and the number of elimination rounds below).

• Teams from the same league will not debate against one another in the preliminary debates.

• Preliminary debates will be assigned one qualified judge.

• Round Pairing Procedure:

• Rounds 1-2 will be randomly pre-set respecting league blocks.

• Round 3-6 will be power matched high-low off the results of all previous debates at the time of pairing.

Elimination Rounds

• A minimum of three judges will adjudicate each elimination round.

• The top sixteen seeds will advance to an Octo-Final Elimination Round. Seeding will be based upon:

• (1) wins

• (2) high-low adjusted team points

• (3) total team points

• (4) opponents’ wins

• (5) drop double high-low adjusted team points

• Teams meeting in Elimination Rounds who already debated in the preliminary rounds will switch sides for the Elimination Round; otherwise Elimination Round sides will be determined by a coin flip.

• Elimination round brackets will not be broken for teams from the same school or league.

• Teams from the same league may debate each other in the Elimination Rounds. The national tournament is intended to be an education activity to all who participate. For this reason, if two teams from the same league are assigned to debate against each other in an elimination round, they will be required to debate. Coaches and league staff will not choose the team which advances to the next round. If two teams from the same school meet in Elimination Rounds the coach may determine who advances.

Awards

The top 20 individual speakers will receive awards based on speaker points. The tie breaking procedure is:

(1) high-low adjusted points

(2) total points

(3) ranks

(4) judge variance (average z-scores)

Awards will be presented to all teams who qualify for the elimination rounds.