Tournament Procedure

Tournament Procedure

For those who are new, the tournament procedure for JCFL qualifiers is slightly different from what you are accustomed to at regular Mississippi tournaments.  Specifically, there are no final rounds in individual events and no break rounds in debate.  Qualifiers and alternates are determined solely by preliminary round performance in debate and preliminaries plus semifinals in individual events. 

In Dramatic Performance, Duo, Oral Interp, Declamation, Oratory, and Extemp students will participate in two preliminary rounds with a single judge in each panel. If an event has 8 or fewer entries, there will be two rounds of competition with 2/3 judges in each panel. If the event has 30 or more competitors, there will be three (3) rounds of competition.  The top 14 entries in each event will advance to a final round of judging, which will consist of two panels--in essence, what we would normally call semifinals. At this point, three judges will score the entrants. National participants will be determined from the cumulative score of the five ballots, breaking first on total ranks, second on total points, third on ranks in semifinals, and fourth on points in semifinals.

The same procedure applies to debate, except that all students will participate in five rounds of Lincoln Douglas, five rounds of Public Forum, or four rounds of Policy debate with a single judge in each round. Debaters will be paired and ranked using the Tabroom program, with the first two rounds randomly paired and the subsequent rounds power-matched.   

All debate will be live and online using the NSDA Campus program. Individual Events will be live with the exception of Duo Interpretation, which will need to be pre-recorded and uploaded to Tabroom by February 8.

Coaches' Meeting and Awards:

Coaches will meet at the conclusion of the competition to set the final list for the national tournament- we will be doing this on Zoom this year. Coaches must commit students to the national competition at this time.  For any student qualified in multiple events, the coach must adhere to the preference stated on that student's preference form, except where the student expressly, and in writing, authorize a departure from the listed preference so that, for example, a teammate may attend nationals.  The meeting will take place immediately after the determination of the results. Coaches who do not attend agree that the district moderator is authorized to determine which events their multiple-qualified students will attend, and waive any objection to said determinations without any appeal. 

Students who outright qualify for nationals will receive trophies from tab. Alternates or those attending but who did not outright qualify will not receive trophies.