Prelims: Four guaranteed randomly paired. It will be the goal to avoid school hitting same school in prelims, but it will not be guaranteed. The top 8 in AA will break to quarters; the top 4 in A will break to semis.
If there is a tie in ballot count, the following tie breakers will be used:
- strength of opposition (opponent’s total ballots)
- head-to-head (if applicable)
- speaker points
- drop hi/low speaks
Quarterfinals: Once the top eight are seeded in the brackets, care will be taken to preserve that a school cannot hit itself until finals by breaking brackets to preserve this rule.
Judge strikes?: We're open to suggestions. Late in a tournament, it may be difficult to find enough quality judges. Further, it takes up time. However, strikes allow teams who have reached semis or finals some control over the final round
Entry Limits: Two teams or contestants in all events.
Judge Requirements: One school provided judge per debate event entered, even if the school is only entering a single debater or team in the event.
- One judge cannot be used to conver an entry consisting of 1 policy team and 1 L-D debater.
- Individual event judges must be designated.
- It is preferred that each judge be able to judge all three events.
Some Quick Math: 14 AA schools = 28 entries teams and 6 A schools = 12 entries/teams. Therefore, we need 40 judges to cover 20 rounds of debate with 2 judges in each round.
Schools would provide 20 / SDHSAA would provide 20 who should be able to judge both policy and L-D.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
6 comments:
I did like the 4 rounds this year. In past years, only 2 rounds caused a lot of sit around time (which is whay I think like Leo said, some people don't like the State Tournament). So I think this format would be great over a two-day tournament. That way, I think we should do judge strikes. I know it takes some time and can be a pain, but at the same time, it is the State Tournament. At a minimum, I would say the finals should be struck, if possible Semi's and if even more possible, quarters.
I know there was not much talk on IE's here, but what about those? I think there should be 3 rounds instead of 2 and then break to finals. Over the 2 days, we could do that. I think it was right to just have the 2 rounds this year because of the one day tourney.
Judge strikes are a pain, but I think as coaches, we all like to have some say in the final panel - even though I'm not sure how great that impact is sometimes. The biggest reason judge strikes are a pain is that invariably, the one coach you are waiting for is either a) judging or b) running their team to Burger King - against the wishes of tournament staff causing everything to bog down as we wait for the coach to be available. For this reason, I really don't support strikes prior to semis. Strikes were ruled out this year simply as a matter of time.
Regarding IE's, the thing I think Travis is forgetting is how small the pool of contestants is - A is very small making three rounds pretty impractical. AA is tiny by invitational standards. If we went to an invitational with that few competitors and saw it was scheduled for three presets in IE's, I believe we would all be scratching our heads. To me, the current system of a guaranteed 2 rounds and then a break of the top six is more fair than our old system of potentially "one and done" and still allows us in the tab to switch up those sections a little bit.
I will comment on the other post later. I can't do it at school, so I have to wait until I get home and then I have to share with teenagers.
Travis is right; the wait time is one reason that I use the term "dislike" when I talk about the state tournament. He's also right, we should have addressed IEs more directly, but I don't think that we can get more than two rounds in. We had trouble finding finals panels this year. Adding another round would make finding clean panels nearly impossible.
I want to keep judge strikes as well. I think that the illusion of control calms the kids down, but the tab room really has to be careful. This year we lost about 20 minutes because Mike Larson was judging the policy final and his kids were waiting to participate in the PF final.
A point that Jon or I should develop in a regular post is that we really need to have a state tournament schedule that organically accounts for the distinct classes and events. Right now, everything is policy centered and the rest of the events are add-ons.
I also really liked the 4 presets. It gave the debaters a sense of possibility and it keep them from having huge down time.
It felt like the State tournament, but with more chance to prove yourself. Consistency had to be on your side to move on in the tournament. Less chance of an odd round taking you out of competition.
As far as IEs go, I like the 2 round set up and agree that there are too few contestants to go with three rounds.
From the extemp draw, I would like to add....Thank you for the revised ballots!!!
One day was a nightmare in terms of sheer exhaustion. I was in school the next day, but I don't remember most of it. Keep the tournament 2 days long.
I like preset rounds, but I acknowledge that A policy will only be 3 rounds preset. I don't remember striking for finals or anything (I thought we only viewed the pairings and were stuck with what worked.) Would we actually get to say, "I will pull that judge from the panel?"
I disagree in a way about A's makes it impractical to do three rounds of preset I.E.'s So they are going to hit the same person in the prelim rounds, that happens at tournaments all the time. I think that the experienced gained for the students involved would be greatly beneficial. The only concern then comes down to judges/time constraints.
I look at the "A" bracket this way in terms of numbers:
Policy Debate: 7-8 Teams
LD Debate: 11-12 teams
PF Debate: 14-16 teams
For. Extemp: 11-12 speakers
Dom. Extemp: 11-12 speakers
O.O.: 10-12 speakers
This speculation includes Harrisburg participating, but it isn't dependant on it.
When I look at breaking debate events to out rounds, I agree that Policy Needs to be straight to semi-finals, and maybe even LD, but if we have 14-16 PF teams, I would like to see them broken down to Quarters. There should be a trigger for when to go to quarters or to semi-finals.
orry, if it is not clear, my e-mail handle is threebags. It is actually Mike Larson from Lennox speaking.
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