Newman Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament

December 7-9, 2018
New Orleans

You and your students are cordially invited to attend the 40th Newman Invitational.  We provide a unique and diverse competitive experience.  Last year, we attracted over 60 schools from 10 different states.

We are pleased to announce that we are a qualifying tournament for UK's TOC in ten events.  In the appropriate events, students advancing to bid rounds of this tournament will earn one official bid for the 2019 National Tournament of Champions hosted by the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, on April 27-29, 2019.  The specific qualifying events are listed below.

We plan to offer 6 preliminary rounds of debate in Policy, LD, and PF, with novice and varsity divisions in Policy and LD.  We also offer 2 three-hour preliminary sessions in Congress.  Please be aware that elims in some of the debate events will carry over to Sunday except for Congress, which will have its final session on Saturday.  Additionally, we offer 4 preliminary rounds in all speech events; however, we will not be able to allow cross-entry between debate and speech events.  Speech competitors can enter up to 3 events within the speech category but no triple entry within a pattern.

NEW in 2018: We will offer a novice division of PF. We reserve the right to collapse the two divisions if entries warrant. We will offer an open division of World Schools debate, where schools may enter three-person teams, using the international format in which the USA Debate Team participates.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT PF:  There will be no "coin flip" in preliminary rounds.  The tabulation software determines sides, guaranteeing best possible balance between "pro" and "con" sides in the prelims.  The pro side always speaks first.  In the elims, the teams flip for sides (unless they met previously in the prelims), but the pro side still always speaks first.

We will tabulate all events on tabroom.com. All postings will be available online and emails/texts will be blasted for those that sign up for that service.  For Policy, LD, PF, and WS, ballots will be completed online. All judges in those events must have a linked tabroom.com account.  Judges in congress and speech events will be completing paper ballots (both master and individual critiques).

Summary of events and TOC qualification status

*semis bid for the Silver division and finals bid for the Gold division

If you have any questions about the tournament, please do not hesitate to ask.

Thank you,

Omar Guevara, Greg Malis, and Alma Nicholson
Tournament Directors