| ||||
|
St. Mark’s will host the Novice Round Up Friday, May 4 and Saturday, May 5, 2012. We will again use a four pod round robin system with appropriate awards. Each school may enter up to four novice policy teams. Your first two entries will be automatically accepted as long as we are below the limit of 24 teams. Entries three and four will be automatically put on a waiting list. On April 1 I will make a decision if we should expand the tournament to 32 teams and let teams off the waiting list if space allows. The tournament seems to work really well with 24 entries. 32 teams would really push the envelope, however, I will balance efficiency concerns with the goal of optimizing opportunities for as many students as we can.
For us, novice means: 1) In their first year of policy debate or 2) Someone who has debated at 3 or fewer policy debate tournaments or 3) Any ninth grader To compete they just need to fit in any of the three categories listed above. We have a pretty lenient definition of what constitutes a "novice".
Currently, we plan to limit the field to 24 teams. Fees for each team will be $100. A drop fee of $100 will be assessed for any entry you drop after April 27. You may hire a judge at a flat rate of $125 per uncovered team. You may cover your judging commitment with any student who has at least two years of varsity debate experience and is at least a junior in high school. Please don’t abuse this privilege. The quality of the tournament is directly related to the judging and in the past our judging has been quite good thanks to coaches who didn’t just bring student judges. We encourage judges to disclose their decision but keep the rfd short (5 minutes or so) and then offer each student one or two things they can do better in their next debate. Please bring judges who are mature enough to provide constructive feedback in an expedient manner. We use a 30 point system and allow 10th points. Please don't give any two debaters in the same debate the same speaker points. Registration will be at 3 pm on Friday. Rounds will start at 4 pm. The full schedule will be announced once entries are finalized. The final round will be scheduled to start no later than 8 pm on Saturday. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me. Tim Mahoney Director of Debate St. Mark’s pacedebate@aol.com | ||||
