LD Online Option Guidelines

Lincoln Douglas Debate Online Option

We want to balance the ideal of an in-person event with a moderate amount of online accommodation, both for the benefit of competitors for whom online works best, and for our program, which benefits from a bump in LD numbers at our home tournament.

At the same time, we want to respect the efforts of those programs who make the effort to join us in person by maintaining as far as possible the in-person nature of the event.

To those ends, we will allow limited online entry according to the following guidelines:

1. No more than 10% of the pool, and no more than 15 total competitors, will be online. We will begin by admitting 6 online competitors and will admit an additional online entry as the total number of entries reaches 70, 80, and so forth. If we top 150 entries, we will admit 15 online debaters and we’ll stop there (though we’re unlikely to hit 160, so that probably won’t matter.)

2. No more than 2 online entries from any given school will be accepted.

3. Online entries must attend a school that is more than six hours’ driving distance from West Des Moines. If there are any “close calls” we’ll let Google Maps be the arbiter of this distinction.

4. Online entries must hire out their judging from the tournament. We will not have any online judges, and we do not want entries who won’t be joining us to be hoovering up the local judging talent that we would prefer to hire ourselves.

If you want to enter online, do the following:

1. Submit your entry to the waitlist, as normal

2. Pay your entry fees ASAP by using our online payment system

3. Once you have entered and paid, contact us via email at valleymidamericacup@gmail.com ; tell us the name(s) and school of the student(s) (up to two per school) who wish to enter online.

4. ASAP, we will respond and let you know if: (a) we are able to let you in the tournament as an online entry immediately; or (b) if you have been waitlisted for online entry, and if so, where you stand on the waitlist.

If you are waitlisted for online entry, you can elect to wait, to withdraw your entry, or to switch to in-person entry. If you elect to withdraw entry, we will refund your entry fee payment as soon as possible.