Tournament Rules

1. Entry Policy

The 2024 SGI is an open invitational for schools and independent entries to enter.

All independent entries must be affiliated with an organized club led by an adult or affiliated with a school. Independent entries must pre-pay prior to the start of registration.

All divisions are considered Open divisions and thus open to middle school and high school competitors.

2.Tabulation

• We will prefer sections of six in elimination rounds however we will prefer a clean break over 6. If the choice is between 4 and 8, we will choose 4. If the choice is between 5 and 7, we will choose 7. If there is a tie at 9, we will break 6 and use the first tie-break.

• We will not break brackets and we will snake the elimination rounds.

• We will aim for 3 judges in quarterfinals and semifinals. We hope to have 5 judges in every final round.

To break to elimination rounds, we will use the following tie-break method:

1) All prelims ranks (truncated to the smallest section) minus the worst rank

2) Reciprocals of all ranks (Total number of 1's, 2's, 3's, etc)

3) All prelim ranks

4) Total Points minus worst

5) Total Points

Each elimination round will start over and we will use the following tie-break:

1) rank in Elimination Round only

2) judge preference in THAT elimination round only

3) Reciprocals of all ranks (prelims + elims)

3. Video Submission

All videos should be submitted through Tabroom.com this year. Each event will use one video throughout the duration of the tournament.

4. Judging Obligations

Unlike many other speech competitions, the SGI is done 100% asynchronously and as a result there can be more flexibility with judging obligations. Each school will owe 1 round for every 1 entry.

Each judge should be out of high school and can cover up to 6 preliminary rounds of judging. This does not include elimination round judging. Each school will be asked to provide qualified individuals for elimination rounds. It is important to understand that each round of judging will require about one hour fifteen minutes of watching students and providing feedback.

We recommend that each adult judge can comfortably fulfill a 3 round obligation, but do not want to limit it in case you have folks who can judge more.

In an effort to produce high quality feedback, judges will have 48+ hours to adjudicate rounds from students. We ask that schools enter head coaches and qualified judges (or alumni) to help judge rounds.

If you would like to hire judging, you can hire for $20/round.