PSCFA Fall Champs
So it’s here! The major Southern California Fall championship tournament for the Pacific Southern California Forensics Association!
At the Fall 2007 Coaches conference we were able to change where NFA-LD was fit into the schedule to avoid conflicting with parliamentary debate prelims. Hopefully allow more people to participate in the event.
As detailed on from the PSCFA invite (found here), NFA-LD will start on Saturday night during the parli elimination round that is almost always canceled. One additional round is then scheduled for Saturday night.
Then, the final two preliminary rounds conflict with what is normally parliamentary debate quarterfinals and semi-finals. One final round will then be held during the parliamentary debate finals.
Additionally, whether or not a final round will be held is at the discretion of the tournament director given the number of entries and room concerns. More than 1 final round may be held award teams Gold/Silver if they win or lose the elim round.
Rounds of NFA LD will be as follows:
Saturday:
6:00-6:45p Round 1
7:00-7:45p Round 2
Sunday:
9:45-10:30a Round 3
2:15-3:00p Round 4
5:15-6:00p Finals (if held/may be festival format)
This means that anyone who wants to register for NFA-LD can do so before the tournament. Registration is hosted at forensicstournament.net
However, in the event that you make it to a parli out-round that conflicts with a nfa-ld preliminary round you will be dropped from NFA-LD and your school will not be charged for the entry. So, if you are entered in both parliamentary debate and NFA-LD, and you qualify for parliamentary debate quarter finals, you can not continue to compete in NFA-LD. Even if you lose in quarter finals part of the agreement between the coaches for adding the event was that if a NFA-LD debater conflicts with ANY parli round they must drop NFA-LD.
JUDGING: This does mean that in the event a school’s judges are committed for the parli quarterfinals and NFA-LD round 3, different judges would need to be available to cover commitment. PSCFA rules require that ALL parli debate judges are committed to judge one out-round beyond the elimination of a school’s last team. This means that if a school has a team in parli octos ALL their parli judges are required to fulfill commitment for parli quarters which overlaps NFA-LD round 3. Therefore, there must be distinct NFA-LD judges available for a school for nfa-ld round 3/4/elims depending on how far the parli team goes.
Only if a school did not have teams in parli octos would the parli judges be free to cover the nfa-ld commitment.
Finally, the tournament is endorsing both the letter and spirit of the NFA-LD rules (found here). It has been a challenge to get the event added at the tournament. One of the main selling points for NFA-LD is that it is different than NDT/CEDA ‘rapid/spread debate.’ Thus, we advise that all debaters and judges be aware of the following section of the rules:
Speeches should be pleasant, comprehensible, and persuasive in tone, especially since not all judges will have traditional debate experience. Speech delivery and quantity of evidence should not be excessive. Since LD debate adheres to the communication principles of individual events, judges are encouraged to give a verbal warning to debaters speaking too rapidly in a round. If the speaker does not heed the warning in that particular round, the judge is strongly encouraged to give that speaker a loss for that round even if the student has otherwise “won” the debate on the basis of the stock issues. On the other hand, judges who encourage students to speak rapidly should be reported to the tournament director. At the national tournament, these judges will be pulled from the judging pool and their schools assessed judging fees for the rounds not covered. Local tournament directors are encouraged to develop their own responses to such judges.
Good luck and I hope to see many of you competing at Fall Champs!
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