The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation is proud to announce the third annual Coolidge Idaho Open, a one-day debate tournament that will be held on Saturday, October 12, 2024, at Wood River High School in Hailey, Idaho.

Tournament registration is free and includes lunch. The tournament is open to high school students from all schools and leagues. We will have a Novice division and a Varsity division. Trophies will be awarded to top finishers in each division. The top five varsity finishers will each receive an invitation to the 2025 Coolidge Cup and a travel stipend prize of up to $1,000 in reimbursement for costs of travel to that tournament next July.

Overview of the Tournament
Date: Saturday, October 12, 2024
Times: A detailed schedule for the day is available here. Students should arrive and gather in the high school cafeteria by 8:30 AM. The championship round and awards conclude by 5:30 PM.
Format:1v1 Coolidge Debate Format
Location: Wood River High School & Community Center 1250 Fox Acres Dr, Hailey, ID 83333
Eligibility: All high school students grades 9-12
Cost: Free
Registration: Registration closes Tuesday, September 8, at 11:59 PM MDT.
Judges: Volunteer citizen judges are provided; schools have no requirement to provide judges.
Attire: Business professional

Resolution and Research Brief
The resolution for this tournament isResolved: Lockdown policy served Americans well during the Covid pandemic.Aresearch brief is available here for you to read and use. This is intended to help you in your preparation. You are not limited to the arguments or evidence in the brief. In fact, you are welcome and encouraged to use the brief as a starting point and build upon it by doing your own additional research and case writing.

Compliance and Explanation of IHSAA Rules
This tournament operates independently of regular, IHSAA sanctioned high school debate tournaments and, as such, students should organize groups to travel together to the tournament with parental support. That is to say that schools and coaches must not provide travel to or from the tournament and coaches must not provide educational/instructional support during the event either in-person or remotely. Students participate as individuals, not as school teams and our tournament does not offer awards for the combined achievement of students from any school. Interested students need not have a peer group at their school to organize with; in fact such students are encouraged to attend.

Tournament Overview and Structure
This is a one-day tournament with both Varsity and Novice divisions. You will begin the day with opening remarks from tournament officials and hosts. We will have four preliminary rounds, and then the top two students will compete in a championship round (which will take place in the auditorium, and to which all students, parents, and judges are invited to attend). For preliminary rounds, competitors will be paired randomly for round one, and paired high-low within brackets thereafter. To clarify, this means students debate an opponent with the same win-loss record as their own from round two onwards.

Trophies will be awarded to the top 8 Novice debaters and the top 8 Varsity debaters. The top five varsity finishers will each receive an invitation to the 2025 Coolidge Cup, which is a national invitational speech and debate tournament sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and held in President Coolidge’s historic hometown of Plymouth, Vermont, traditionally the week of Independence Day (July 4). Learn more about the Coolidge Cup here.All students grades 9 to 12 from any school are eligible to compete, including homeschool students.

Format and Style
Students will compete in the Coolidge 1v1 Debate format. This is the same format that is used at the Coolidge Cup. If you are new to debating in this format, we highly recommend you review our Debate Guide, which provides information about this particular format, style, and rules. Consistent with Coolidge Debate, this tournament will recruit and use volunteer citizen judges. Schools are not required to provide judges for this tournament.

Questions
If you have any questions about the tournament, the Coolidge Cup, or about judging, please contact Coolidge Foundation Debate Director Jonathan Peele (jpeele@coolidgefoundation.org).