Southern California District Qualifier

for the 2025 National Tournament

Information

Southern California District NSDA

2025 District Qualifying Tournaments

Speech and Debate Events: March 22-23 at Helix Charter High School, La Mesa

Student Congress: March 29 at Santiago High School, Corona

Schools who are paid members of the Southern California District of the NSDA are cordially invited to enter and participate in the Southern California District Tournament. The tournament will be held in person at the above locations. Qualifiers to the National Tournament will be based on actual entries competing in each event. This year our District, so long as a minimum number of entries is met, will qualify 3 in most events. The District’s level for next year will be determined by the number of degrees our District has this year. Please enter all of your NFL points soon. The number of spots that your school is allowed is determined by the entry deadline of each tournament.

Procedures and Deadlines for Entry:

1. Enter all competitors online at www.tabroom.com, which will be accepting entries starting February 10. If you have not previously used this entry site, click on the “Create a New Account” link and register your school. Next, click on the link to “Tournaments” and then find the Southern California District Tournament. All students and judges will also need to have a Tabroom account that is linked to your school. Competitor entry on the tournament website should be done by coaches only, and coaches are responsible for meeting all entry limitations and requirements. Online entry deadline is Monday, March 11 at 8:00 pm for the Congress tournament and Monday, March 18 at 8:00 pm for the IE/Debate tournament.

2. You may record drops online without paying a penalty until 8:00 pm on Wednesday, March 13 for Congress and until 8:00 pm on Wednesday, March 20 for IE/Debate. Any drops after these deadlines will need to be sent to gosborn@helixcharter.net and will still be charged a full entry fee.

3. There will be no Official Paper entry this year, but there will be some online forms that must be printed, signed, scanned and uploaded to the tournament site by 8:00 pm on Wednesday, March 13 for Congress for IE/Debate and by 8:00 pm on Wednesday, March 20.

A complete entry will include all of the following;

1. School Consent Forms (available under “NSDA Forms” tab on registration site),

2. Single Entry Letters of Intent (available under “NSDA Forms” tab on registration site). You will also need to enter those preferences online (Please be sure that the online entry and the signed form match)

In addition, all entry fees and outstanding fees with NSDA must be paid by these deadlines.

4. Tournament manuals for the IE/Debate tournament and the Student Congress tournament are available to all NSDA members on the speechanddebate.org website. In the “District” section, you will find the link to “Tournament Manual”.

IE/Debate

March 22-23

Helix Charter High School

4200 Lowell St, La Mesa, CA 91941

Events: Policy Debate, Lincoln Douglas Debate, Public Forum Debate, Big Question Debate, World Schools Debate, Original Oratory, Foreign Extemp, United States Extemp, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Program Oral Interpretation and Informative.

Student Congress

March 29

Santiago High School

1395 E Foothill Pkwy,Corona, CA 92881

Events: Student Congress (House/Senate)

Fees: All NSDA dues and outstanding NSDA charges must be paid to NSDA, before any school may participate. District dues (the $50.00 tournament fee) and event entry fees must also be paid to the Southern California District (Information below). No student may compete without the required fees being paid. Itemized tournament fees:

• School Membership fee: $50.00 (annual payment of $50 inc. with your entry fees)

• Policy Debate (per team) $40.00

• Public Forum (per team) $30.00

• Lincoln-Douglas $25.00

• Big Question Debate $25.00

• IEs $10.00

• Duo $20.00

• Congress $10.00

• World Schools Debate (per team) $30.00

Payment: For accounting purposes, all schools should be making a single payment (not having students/families send checks/pay individually).

To pay by credit card, please email gosborn@helixcharter.net to request a Square invoice.

Please make checks payable to “Southern California District NSDA”

Send to:

Gregg Osborn

6540 Green Gables Ct.

San Diego, CA 92119

Judges: Each school must provide one qualified adult judge for every five (5) IE entries and one qualified adult judge for every two (2) debate entries. On the Congress weekend, each school must provide one qualified adult judge for every five (5) Congress entries. Your judges MUST be available to judge THROUGHOUT the tournament. You must meet your judging commitment on Saturday as well as all day Sunday. It is imperative that you meet your commitment, as we will be using two judges in each of the preliminary rounds of IEs. Please make every effort to bring qualified judges. If your team does not have the required number of judges, your entry will be reduced. Schools entering in debate must bring debate qualified judges.

Student Congress: This one-day event will be held on March 16, separate from the other District Tournament. Congress entries are independent from the formula used to determine all other entries. Tabroom will let you know the number of entries you are allowed. You may also check the NSDA Congress Manual to determine your Student Congress entries. (See page 60 of the District Tournament Operations Manual) Our district must have at least 6 schools and 10 or more students willing to participate in the Senate to seat a Senate. The number of chambers of the House will depend on the number of entries. We need at least 16 competitors in the House to seat two chambers.

Congress legislation will be available no later than March 2 on the Tabroom website.

If your school would like to submit legislation for consideration for use in this year’s tournament, please email a copy of the bill to the District Chair by March 10. (gosborn@helixcharter.net)

Rules: For individual events, there will be 3 preliminary rounds and we will break a number of competitors to be determined by the District Committee to break rounds. For Debate, there will be 4 preliminary rounds and all undefeated and one loss teams will break to a double elimination bracket, with the exception of World Schools, which will break to single elimination bracket. If the entry for any debate event is small enough, the District Committee may determine to use the Round Robin Method for that event, per the District Tournament Manual. Rules for events are available in the NSDA District Tournament Operations Manual. Please read all rules in the manual before coming to the tournament. Violations of the rules may result in disqualification. Each coach is responsible for adhering to the rules and seeing that his/her students and judges are also aware of them. The following are some important notes:

1. Each coach must check the NSDA membership for each student listed on the entry. (Note: the NSDA only credits degrees for your students who have officially registered and joined online. They will have a blue check mark in the “Districts Eligible” column.)

2. A school may enter no more than the maximum number listed on the Chapter Entries Formula from the Tournament Manual. If qualified, a school may enter up to two bonus entries.

3. Each school may, within their maximum number, enter no more than four Public Forum teams, four Lincoln Douglas competitors, four Big Question debaters, four World Schools Debate teams (of 3 students each), four Duo teams and four competitors in each Individual Event.

4. A student may double enter in the IE/Debate tournament with the following restrictions:

A student may only enter one team/partnership event, unless their partner in one event is also their partner in the other and both prefer the same event on their Single Entry Letters of Intent

A student entered in one of the two extemporaneous events may not enter in another IE.

All students double entering must declare in advance in which event they will attend Nationals. This declaration must be uploaded to the following form by the deadline listed above. Students who qualify in a team/partnership event and a solo event MUST attend nationals in the team/partnership event unless both members have qualified in a solo event and have indicated on the “Letter of Intent” that they prefer their solo event. Finally, since Student Congress is held at a different time and location, it may be a student’s third event. Remember, a school’s number of congress entries is determined independently of debate and IE entries.

If a student prefers to be considered for a spot on one of the district World Schools teams, they may/must mark that on their Letter of Intent form. This year our District will be allowed to field 2 World Schools teams. The method used to determine those teams is explained further below.

6. We will not be collecting manuscripts. However, all students and coaches are responsible for ensuring that the speeches following all NSDA rules can be accessed in the NSDA High School Unified Manual (check rules for events, updates are highlighted). In addition, Interp source material and properly cited Original event manuscripts must be available at the District tournament in the event of a protest.

7. In Big Question Debate, all entries must be single student only and each school is limited to only four (4) entries. In World Schools Debate, all entries must consist of 3 - 5 students and each school is limited to only four (4) entries.

8. Debate Topics:

Policy Debate

Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.

Lincoln Douglas

Resolved: The development of Artificial General Intelligence is immoral.

Public Forum

Resolved: In the United States, the benefits of the use of generative artificial intelligence in education outweigh the harms.

Big Questions

Resolved: Creativity is a more powerful force than intelligence.

World Schools

TBD.

9. World Schools Debate Selection: We are able to send two (2) World School Debate Teams to Nationals. The Southern California District will select its 10 qualifying students with the following criteria.

• • • 5 spots will go to the 1st alternates in Pufo Debate, LD Debate, IX, USX

    • 3 - 5 spots on one team will go to the team placing first in the WSD competition

    • Any remaining spots will go to, in this order…

    • 1st alternate in Senate

    • 1st alternate in House

10. This year, the District Committee will be reaching out to coaches to work as tournament staff. For all other coaches, you are welcome to judge to meet your requirement. As not all coaches will be part of the tournament staff, there will be a coaches’ review posted directly after the preliminary rounds.

As the tournaments approach, we will send out more information regarding further logistics of the tournament (accessing Tabroom and NSDA, Campus, etc…). If you have any questions or concerns please contact me via telephone or email. It makes for a much smoother tournament if we work to resolve any problems in advance of the tournament. I look forward to seeing you at the tournament and I hope you will join my effort to provide a memorable competitive experience.