Thank you so much for considering the Tall City Invitational Qualifying Tournament for your competition weekend of January 18th. This tournament is brought to you by the Rebel Speech & Debate Boosters of Legacy High School (formerly known as Midland Lee). This will be the 47th annual running of the Tall City Invitational and we are pleased to bring you a full slate of events for your teams.

Some our our highlights include:

Awesome Sweepstakes Trophies in both Large School (4A-6A) and Small School (1A-3A & TAPPS) as well our our Squad Efficiency Trophy given to the team with the highest sweepstakes point per student entry (minimum 5 students across 10 events). We will have 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place trophies in all events and Finalist medals for 4th though 6th place.

Food! Legacy High School is home to one of the top ranked National BBQ teams and they will be providing lunch/dinner plates for your students. If you want to open a tab for your team just let us know and we can take care of that for you. Our amazing culinary department will be taking care of the coaches and judges in the hospitality room in exchange for the amazing job those individuals do at keeping our ballots coming in on time!

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 early in the season. 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.

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 and we want you to be a part of it!

Because we depend on the expected provisions of judges by attending schools 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 can not be guaranteed. (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!!

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 head 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 and Congressional Legislation pieces are listed in their respective event tabs.

**Attention** Lincoln-Douglas Debate will be using the UIL Spring Resolution!

Congress Docket: TFA Spring 2025

Prelim: 15, 11, 14, 12, 13

Finals: 16, 19, 18, 20, 17

Conflict Patterns:

Pattern A - Persuasive Domestic Extemp, Dramatic Interp, Duet Acting, Informative Speech, Poetry, & Impromptu
Pattern B - Informative Foreign Extemp, Humorous Interp, DUO Interp, POI, Prose, & Original Oratory
Pattern C - Congress and all Debate events are locked. There is NO Cross-Entry with the other patterns or the Academic Events

Link to event pattern schedule: Tall City Rebel Schedule Google Sheet

Sweepstakes formula is as follows:

Individual Events and Congress

1st - 15 points

2nd - 10 points

3rd - 5 points

Finalist (4-6) - 3 points

Debate Events (including CX, LD, PF)

1st place - 15 points

2nd place - 10 points

Semifinalists - 5 points

Quarterfinalist - 3 points

Concerning NIETOC Bids:

During with the 2024-2025 competitive season, bids are gained at the following levels:

0-19 contestants = FIRST PLACE BID

20-34 contestants = FIRST, SECOND & THIRD PLACE BIDS

35-50 contestants = FINAL ROUND BIDS

51-70 contestants = SEMIFINAL ROUND BIDS

71-99 contestants = QUARTERFINAL ROUND BIDS

100 + contestants = OCTAFINAL ROUND BIDS

If you have any questions, please feel free to email Joshua.Wimberley@midlandisd.net or call/text me at 432-230-9995