18 October 2021

Dear Debate Coach and Squad:

We invite you to enter the annual Shawnee Mission West Novice Invitational Debate Tournament to be held Friday and Saturday, November 12 and 13.  We will host three novice divisions.  Limited Experience Novice is ONLY for debaters with 1 or 0 tournaments under their belt and will be Saturday only; they may not stray from the Novice Packet used by Washburn Rural.  Open Novice is for any novice debaters and will be five rounds, Saturday only.  This division is not bound by the Novice Packet on either side.   Champ Novice is for your best novice debaters and will have an experienced judge pool; it will also be Friday and Saturday, and it will not adhere to any packet of arguments of evidence.  Champ will break into Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and Finals if numbers merit (semi-finals if not).

You are guaranteed entry for four teams; you may request extras, and they will be awarded as follows:  schools that give us extras, SMSD schools, EKNSDA schools, all others.    We can host 100, so when that number is reached with initial entries, entry to the tournament will close.

We will award medals to the top eight teams.  The first two rounds will be pre-set, and the rest will be power-matched.  Sweepstakes awards will go to first, second, and third place schools and will be based on preliminary records of the top four teams per school with at least one entry in Champ.  Limited Experience teams will not count toward sweeps.    

We look forward to seeing you on November 12 and 13!

Sincerely,

Rose Lawler                                                        Eric Qiang

Director of Debate and Forensics                           Debate Captain and Tournament Director

Schedule:

Friday November 12

Champ

Registration        3:00

Round 1             3:30

Round 2             5:00

Saturday November 9

C Rd 3               8:00

O/LE Rd 1

C Rd 4               9:30

O/LE Rd 2

C Rd 5               11:15

O/LE Rd 3

Lunch 12:45-1:15

Announcements 1:15/ASAP

C Quarterfinals   1:30

O/LE Rd 4

C Semfinals        3:00

O/LE Rd 5

C Finals              4:30

O/LE Awards ASAP

Rules and Regulations

1. Prep time will be 8 minutes for all divisions.

2. Entry fees will be $6.00 per team (or whatever you charge). Invoices will be sent during tournament week.

3. The registration deadline is November 5 at 5:00pm.

4. Your bill will reflect the number of entries you have on file at the deadline, or the number who actually compete, whichever is greater. Please keep your numbers up to date!

5. All coaches/sponsors are on standby to judge.  While we try to fill judging positions with adults, we sometimes use trustworthy advanced debaters to judge. 

6. Any team more than 10 minutes late to a round through no fault of the tournament will forfeit the round.

7. Extras will be distributed fairly the week and day of the tournament.

8. Judges may re-judge teams in elimination rounds without respect to sides or opponents.

9. Students and judges may utilize the building’s wireless network during rounds to exchange speech docs using an email chain or similar or conduct research.  Anyone using the network to communicate with someone outside the round will lose the round and be disqualified from medaling. 

10. Limited Experience is limited to debaters with 0 or 1 tournament of experience. We reserve the right to disqualify any students found in violation of this rule.  LE is also limited to the Novice Packet as used by the Washburn Rural tournament.

11. Tabroom.com will be utilized for all tournament functions.

12. To the extent possible, the judging in the Champ division will consist of our most experienced judges, ideally those who have competed in high school debate.