Thank you so much for considering the Rebel UIL/TFA Combo Invitational Qualifying Tournament for your competition weekend of January 21st. This tournament is brought to you by the Rebel Speech & Debate Boosters of Legacy Freshman High School. This will be the 4th annual running of the Rebel UIL/TFA Combo Spring Meet and we are pleased to bring you a full slate of events for your teams.

-

Some our our highlights include:

-

3rd Party Test Materials for all UIL Academic events. We do not recycle Set A materials, these will be fresh materials that your teams have not seen. We will supply clean copies of each test and prompt for you to use as practice material after the tournament.

-

Awesome Sweepstakes Trophies for our top Speech & Debate school, our top UIL Academic school, and the overall Combination Winner. In order to level the playing field, each school will select 3 students to represent them in each side of the Sweepstakes Race. Pick your best 3 Speech & Debate and your best 3 UIL Academic competitors. The only points that are counted towards sweeps are those earned by the students named by the registered coach at the start of the tournament.

-

We will have 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place medals in all events and Finalist medals for 4th though 6th place. We will also have trophies for the Top Debater (prelim speaker points & win/loss record), Top Speaker (Extemp, Info, OO, Impromptu), and Top Interper (HI, DI, Poe, Pro, POI).

-

Food Delivery! We know that it is a hassle to run off campus and grab food for your students. We have concessions available through your Tabroom Registration. We will be making a lunch run to Chick-Fil-A at 11:30am and a dinner run to Little Caesars Pizza at 4pm. Menu options are available in your registration screens under concessions.

-

Service!! We know that you have a lot of choices on where to spend your travel budgets and we appreciate you choosing to come to our tournament. It is our goal to make sure that you leave Midland with a smile on your face knowing that your students have gotten the chance to practice their craft and get good feedback just in time for NSDA NatQuals and UIL District contests. Our judges will be trained on what to look for in their events and they know how important it is to provide good ballots to the participating teams. While we will be running registration through Tabroom we plan to utilize traditional paper ballots to make sure that coaches have a physical copy of each round's results.

-

For those that are needing hotels for the weekend please contact me via email at joshua.wimberley@midlandisd.net or by cell/text at 432-230-9995. I have spoken to several of our local hotel owners and sales managers and we have secured rate agreements starting as low as $85/night for dual queen rooms. I can not guarantee how long those rates will be available but I will work with you to make sure that your team can get the maximum value out of your trip to Midland!

-

If there is anything we can help with please let me know. We are very excited to be offering a live in-person tournament experience again and we want you to be a part of it!

-

Because of the lack of Speech & Debate judges in the area we can not guarantee that elimination rounds or finals rounds will be paneled. We will do our best to provide panels in finals but it should not be expected. (TFA Constitution p. 88 'Requirements' Section 19.) That being said, we encourage each school to bring as many volunteers to judge as they can. Everyone knows that no tournament director has ever complained about having too many available judges!! Trust me when I say that I would much rather have your judges than your judge fees. We do plan to hire at least 15-20 judges to cover our Policy and LD debate rounds so if you have qualified alumni in the area please have them reach out to me.

-

The 3rd round of debate will be power matched when possible in accordance to TFA preference. (TFA Constitution p. 91 'Pairing of Preliminary Rounds' Section 2.)

-

We will break brackets where possible in debate rounds. In the event a school has a closeout on a bracket the registered coach has the option of deciding which of their teams will advance or if the teams will debate each other and let the judge decide.

-

Debate Resolutions:

-

Policy

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

-

Lincoln Douglas - Please Note We are using the UIL Spring Topic for LD

Resolved:Term limits for members of the United States Congress are justified.

-

Public Forum Debate - NSDA Jan/Feb 2023 Topic

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should increase its diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve internal armed conflicts in West Asia.

-

Congressional Legislation - TFA Spring 2023 Docket

Prelim Session 1: 11-13

Prelim Session 2: 14-16

Finals: 17-20

-

Sweepstakes formula is as follows:

Individual Events and Congress

1st - 12 points

2nd - 10 points

3rd - 8 points

Finalist (4-6) - 6 points

Debate Events (including CX, LD, & PF)

4 points per win and 2 points per loss in the prelim rounds