Conway Classic
Tournament Information and Guidelines
Important Notes: In accordance with WIAA regulations a certified employee of the school must be present at all sanctioned tournaments when traveling with students. Our tournament adheres to all regulations and guidelines outlined by the WSFA and the WIAA.
NOTE: YOU MUST ENTER VIA EMAIL. PLEASE EMAIL ENTRIES TO frappier@gem.gonzaga.edu
School Entry Fee: $30.00
Debate: $30 per cross-x team
$20 per LD Entry (note, this is per individual LD entry)
Invidual Events $ 10 per slot
Student Congress $ 10 per slot
Judging: $ 100 additional per cross-x team not covered
$60 additional per LD entry not covered
$15 additional per IE slot not covered
Note: You will be charged for any drops made at registration. The latest you may make drops without a charge is 5pm on January 2nd. There will be absolutely no adds made at registration. This is a nightmare for the tabroom so we ask that you make all your final adds before that time. Just to clarify: Drops made before January 2nd at 5pm will not be charged. Drops made after January 2nd at 5pm WILL be charged.
Tournament Staff
In the past 3 years every pairing and ballots were available at least 30 minutes before the scheduled start time for that round. Our intention is to continue this tradition of efficiency. The following personal will run the tab room at the Conway Classic:
Tab Room Director and CX Debate Tab: Glen Frappier (Gonzaga University)
LD Debate: Sam Normington
Individual Events and Student Congress: Kara Smith (Lake City HS) and Mike Stovern (Mead HS)
Ballot Table and Judges: Grace Saez, Nick Bormann and Melissa Hanna (Gonzaga University)
In accordance with state
rules, state high school coaches are working in an advisory capacity.
Each judge you bring covers two cross-examination teams or four Lincoln Douglas entries, and six individual event slots. Gonzaga is not in session during our tournament and thus we have a very limited judging pool to hire from, so we strongly encourage (beg) you to bring qualified judges. We’d rather have the judge than your money.
Judges that you list will be expected to fulfill their commitment. Please indicate any and all restrictions (such as schools that the critic cannot see.) Please also indicate the times that the judge will be available, and match it to the schedule to make sure they know when rounds will begin. Debate judges are committed one round past the round their team was eliminated in. For example, if you clear no teams in debate, you are still obligated for the first elimination rounds. If your team loses in the quarters, your judges are still obligated for the semis, etc.
All high school coaches are expected to be available to judge unless they provide enough judges to cover their entire entry. Judges who only have students entered in cross-examination may be asked to judge LD and vice versa. LD will be run in two flights per round. Judges will judge both flights during that round.
The quality of the judges that you bring to our tournament will in large degree determine how good a tournament we can run. Please consider this when choosing your judges.
The tab room and ballot table is the only entity that is allowed to assign ballots. Any coach or judge pushing a ballot (i.e. giving away their ballot to someone else) without going through the tab room/ballot table subjects their top team in the top division to a forfeit. This doesn't mean you can give your ballot away and then come and tell the ballot table/tabroom. If a change needs to be made come and talk to us and we'll make any appropriate changes. We are very serious about this so please adhere to this new rule.
We will be awarding trophies to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place schools in the overall sweepstakes. These sweepstakes are for debate and individual events only. Please see Student Congress section for explanation of SC sweepstakes awards.
Points for Sweepstakes will be awarded as follows:
Place I.E.’s LD CX
First 15 25 35
Second 10 15 25
Semis/IE 3rd 5 10 15
Quarters/IE Finalist 2 5 5
We have arranged with Red Lion River Inn to extend special rates for people attending our tournament. Individual reservations can be made by calling 1-800-RED-LION (1-800-733-5466) and requesting the rate for "Gonzaga Debate."
BE SURE AND TELL THEM YOU ARE REQUESTING THE GONZAGA DEBATE SPECIAL RATE.
|
Hotel |
Rate |
Location |
|
Red Lion River Inn |
$79.95 for Single, Double, Triple or Quad |
Right Next to GU campus |
Spokane's Red Lion River Inn provides complimentary shuttle service to/from the Spokane International Airport. There is a courtesy phone near baggage claim that rings directly to the hotel.
Other hotels in the area, close to campus, include:
Courtyard by Marriott 509-456-7000
Holiday Inn Express 509-328-8505
Registration must be received by January 1st, 2008. PLEASE EMAIL YOUR ENTRY TO ME. The only way we will receive your entry is if you email it. Do not fax or mail entries. I will confirm via email when I receive your entry.
Just to be clear: There will be no adds allowed at registration. Drops made at registration WILL be charged. Drops made prior to registration (i.e. the day before) WILL NOT be charged. Please don't get angry with us when you try to add someone at registration and we say no. Please don't be angry when we charge you for drops made at registration. You have been warned.
Our
tournament adheres to all regulations and guidelines outlined by the WSFA and
the WIAA.
CX divisions will use the 2007-2008 NFL Topic:
Resolved: The
United States federal government should substantially increase its public health
assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Lincoln Douglas will use the NFL January/February
topic.
Resolved: It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a military threat.
Novice eligibility for debate divisions will be determined as follows: To be eligible for the novice division each debater on the team should be in their first year of debate. Ultimately this will be up to the directors discretion but I would hope nobody would try to stack the novice division with students who should be getting the experience in Open. Novice is for novice debaters, don't be that coach who is just hunting for points.
Rounds one and two will be
pre-matched. Rounds three through round six will be power matched accordingly.
Time limits for CX debate are 8-3-5-8
Novice division will adhere to the WSFA novice case and areas. Disputes regarding violations of the novice case areas will be resolved by the High School Coaches involved in the tabulation of the tournament. Below are the novice case areas for 2007-2008.
All Affirmative Novice Division Policy Debate Teams are required to present a case that fits one of the following areas:
No counterplans may be run in novice debate. The kritik of colonialism may be run as a criticism of the plan action.
Note: the first four cases are from the national novice case area, which is also being used by Oregon.
Note: The fact that a case fits one of these novice case areas does not mean that the case is topical nor that it is not topical. Judges shall determine the topicality of the affirmative plan based on the argumentation presented in the debate.WE DO NOT BREAK BRACKETS IN THE ELIMINATION ROUNDS. If two teams from the same school are seeded in such a way that they meet in the elimination rounds no debate will occur. One team will advance to the next out round based on their coaches decisions. There are many reasons, both pedagogical and logistical, for this rule. I would be happy to have a debate with you over this decision, but not during the tournament.
Individual event offerings will include novice and open divisions of humorous interpretation, extemporaneous speaking, oratory, interpretive reading, expository, impromptu, duo, ed comm, and dramatic interpretation. Junior division entries are limited to freshman, sophomores, or other students participating in their first year of competition. Time limits are 8 minutes for all events except extemp (7 minutes) and impromptu (6 minutes total, divided how the student wishes.) Students have a 30 second grace period. All other questions regarding individual event procedure or rules should be sent to Kara Smith. ksmith@cdaschools.org
Divisions
· Novice: Open to all students who have no debate experience prior to the 2007-08 school year, and who have not placed first through fourth in any debate division at two invitational tournaments with 15 or more schools.
Divisions may be collapsed as necessary.
Coaches should indicate students to be considered for Presiding officer on the registration.
Legislation
The official legislation adopted by the GSL will be the legislation used for the tournament. If you need a copy of the legislation, please see the Gonzaga Debate website. If you are from a school outside of the GSL, please submit a copy of your school’s legislation to me (Kara Smith) at ksmith@cdaschools.org by December 20, 2007 so that I may have it added to the GSL legislation. Please have your students in Congress bring their own copies of the legislation.
Scoring
We will use a base system. Speaker precedence will not be reset between the sessions. The base will be determined by counting the total number of floor speeches and dividing that total by the number of Congresspersons who have actually given speeches. Points awarded to PO’s for presiding do not count as speeches in the computation of base.
Each speech will be awarded up to 8 points by the judge in the round. After Session II, each Congressperson's speech scores will be totaled. If the Congressperson has given fewer speeches than base, or a number of speeches equal to base, that Congressperson will have a total score from the judges equal to the sum of all his/her speeches. If, however, the Congressperson has given a greater number of speeches than base, the sum of his/her speech points will be divided by the number of speeches that person actually gave, and the resulting average will be multiplied by the base number. The product of this computation will be the Congressperson's total score from the judges.
To every Congressperson's total score from the judges will be added a score awarded by the Parliamentarian of the chamber. The Parliamentarian will award from 1to 4 points to each Congressperson. The sum of the judge’s total score and the Parliamentarian's score will be the student's total score.
If the number of entries results in more than one chamber of Congress for a division of competition, there will be a final round called the Super Congress Sessions. Then, scores for each Congressperson will be totaled after Session II, and the top 7 to 10 members of each chamber will advance to the Final Session. Outstanding PO and Student’s Choice awards will be voted on at the end of the last session. Student’s Choice will be done by Preferential balloting.