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The first piece of advice is to relax and not worry too much. Hosts always worry and see mistakes that the students don't notice. Tournaments can seem like a big undertaking but, with a few basic resources and guidelines, everyone has a good time and, most importantly, students get a chance to debate. Furthermore, you are not alone; there are many experienced coaches and the executive, all of whom would be happy to help if you ask them to. On this page we have links to all of the major things that you may want to look after for your tournament. They are just suggestions and you can alter them if you want to -- after all, it is your tournament -- but you should let people know in the invitation if there are major differences from the usual procedures. You may also want to check with some of the executive or experienced coaches to see why things have usually been done in a certain way in case there are potential problems that you have not thought of. The only exception to the host's freedom to alter things is in the case of one of the provincial championships since provincial championships have to follow the MSDA rules.
Selecting the date, size, resolutions, style, and grade levels
Rooms, scripts, scoresheets, registration, food, and medals
Guidelines:
1- Date, time and facilities: The first steps are to decide on the date, time, size and an grade range for the tournament. So far as the date is concerned, bear in mind that all senior highs and some middle schools have exams in late January and that some private schools have exams in December. Friday nights and Saturdays mean that Jewish schools cannot attend and Sunday mornings can be tricky, but not impossible, for Christian schools. Generally you should assume that each round will take 50 minutes to an hour, that registration will take 20 minutes, that the judges briefing will take 30 minutes and that it will take you thirty minutes to calculate the results and present the awards. Thus a 2 round tournament will take roughly 3 hours and a 3 round tournament will take 4 hours. If your tournament is a very small one (e.g. 10 teams), it will take less time. All of the teams debate in each round so you need one room for every two teams. You also should have a spare team, often called the swing team, in case an odd number of teams appear. You also need a large area to have the judges briefing at the start of the tournament and to present awards at the end. If you are going to have a debaters briefing, you will need a second suitably large room at the start of the tournament. Finally, you will need an area where the debaters and judges can register, i.e. give their names and schools and pick up any information that you have for them.
2 -- Size and grades: The size of your tournament is up to you. A small 2 or 3 school event is easier to run but lacks the excitement of a larger event and does not involve as many students. The maximum size is determined by your facilities since you need one room for every two teams and it is wise to have a couple of rooms unassigned in case there are any additional teams whose registration forms somehow got lost. If you invite all of the MSDA members, you will get a maximum of roughly 16 schools for a junior event (grades 6 to 9) and 14 for a senior event (grades 10-12). You decide whether you want your tournament to be junior or senior or some other arrangement (e.g. grades 9 and 10). In the initial invitation you can put a cap on the number of teams per school with an option for them to register more if you find that there is space after the deadline. As host it is quite reasonable for you to have a few more entries than the initial cap.
3 - Type of debate and resolutions: In Manitoba we normally do parliamentary debate at the junior level and either parliamentary or cross-examination debate at the senior high level. It should be noted that cross-ex rounds take longer and you should allow 60 to 70 minutes for each cross-ex round. You can use some other format if you wish to but you should make rules clear in the invitation. It is easiest just to use the MSDA rules. If you are using parliamentary debate, you should specify whether you are allowing heckling and/or points of information. Heckling is usually a very bad idea at the junior level. You must also decide whether to use a prepared or an impromptu resolution. A prepared resolution is sent out with the invitation. It can be issue related (e.g. the drinking age should be raised), general (e.g. we should slow down) or off beat (e.g. Canada is a Hamlet not a Hercules). Teams do both sides of a prepared resolution, i.e. one side in the first round and the other side in the second. Impromptu resolutions are announced at the tournament and the students are usually given 30 minutes to prepare (this will add significantly to the length of the tournament). After 10 minutes the government must tell the opposition what the definition is, after which they have the remaining time (20 minutes) to finish preparing. If the opposition does not accept the definition, they can appeal to the organizer or someone that the organizer designates to deal with definitions. Usually students have a different impromptu resolution for each round. Sometimes they are given a choice of 2 or 3 resolutions with one team choosing the resolution and the other team then choosing the side. Finally in either impromptu or prepared resolutions you need to decide if you want to allow unusual (squirreled) definitions or if you want to limit the teams to straight definitions, i.e. what a reasonable person would take the resolution to mean. The rules are available by following these links: MSDA Parliamentary rules , MSDA Cross-Examination Rules. Some resolutions are available at the following site: MSDA resolution list .
4 - Officials and scripts: You should try to have at least one chairperson in each room. Judges can chair debates but would rather not if possible because it is difficult to chair, judge and time. The chairperson (also called the Speaker in parliamentary debate) can be a student. The chairperson can read the script and do the timing. If you have enough students, it is useful to have a timer in each room as well. The timer usually indicates time by holding up the appropriate number of fingers. The chairperson's scripts are available by following this link: Speaker's Scripts.
5 - Food: The students appreciate having juice and a snack between rounds. It is best not to put them out before the first round or they will disappear. Adult judges like having coffee/ tea, and are happy to have food as well. It is desirable to have some variety if possible. eg. sweet cookies, healthy fruit/crackers/cheese, granola bars, chips. Please also be aware of providing something for those with allergies or dietary restrictions, if possible. Please avoid all types of nuts.
6 - Medals: In Manitoba we provide 1 medal to the top person from each school that participates, as well as medals for the top several speakers and the top several teams. How many medals you distribute depends on your budget for medals but the more the better as a general rule. In order to spread out the medals, some events don't award more than 1 medal per student at any one tournament. We usually announce their position if they earn any award after their first medal, although that can take longer to calculate. We usually announce up to the tenth spot and medal the top 3 to 5. If the tournament has both open and novice categories, novice and open are ranked separately. If a school enters both novice and open debaters, the award for the top student from that school is always presented to the top open student from that school even if a novice student has a higher score. If you are hosting an MSDA event and are stuggling to financially provide medals, please speak with the MSDA president to support your needs.
7 - Judges: Schools are normally expected to bring 1 judge per team. High school (grade 10 and up) students can judge at junior competitions but not at senior ones. Adults can judge at all competitions. They do not need to have any experience. Parents of students who are competing are often a good source of judges. Parents do not judge their own children and coaches do not judge their own students. If you are hosting a tournament you should have 1 judge for each of your teams and, if possible, some spares in case a few judges do not appear. If you can provide more judges, that is great. You can never have too many judges -- the more there are in a room, the better. The judges should be briefed by an experienced coach at the start of the tournament and it is best to allow 30 minutes for this. In addition to the briefing judges are given some written guidelines to help them and those are available at this link. Judges fill in ballots during the round and may make comments after the round but do not reveal the results to the debaters. They or the chairpeople bring the scoresheets to the tabulation room at the end of each round.
8 - Scoresheets: The scoresheets are available by following this link: MSDA Debate Scoresheets
9 - Pairings: The pairings are a list of which teams are debating against each other in each round. There are a number of ways of arranging them but there are several rules that should be followed in setting up the pairings. The first is that no team should debate another team more than once, the second is that no team should be seen by the same judge twice, the third is that teams from the same school should not debate against each other, and the fourth is that teams should debate both sides of any prepared resolution. One way of achieving this is to have the judges stay in the same room, the government/affirmative teams move down one room in the schedule (e.g. if they were in room 2 they move to room 3) and switch sides, and the opposition teams move down two rooms in the schedule (e.g. if they were in room 2 they move to room 4) and switch sides. If you have a third round, the teams that moved one room for the second round move one room again (e.g. the team that was in room 2 for the first round and 3 for the second round now moves to 4 for the third round) and the teams that moved two rooms for the second round move two rooms again (e.g. the team that was in room 2 for the first round and 4 for the second round now moves to 6 for the third round). You can avoid having teams from the same school debate against each other by having all of the teams from any one school on the same side (i.e. all government or all opposition) for the first round.
If you want to use them, here are some excel spreadsheets with pairings already done. They are listed in the attachment area at the bottom of this page; just click the ones that you want to download. The one titled MSDA 2 rd is for open teams in 2 round tournaments. The one titled MSDA 3 rd are for open teams in 3 round tournaments. The one titled MSDA N2 is for 2 round Novice tournaments and the one titled MSDA N3 is for 3 round Novice tournaments. The tabs at the bottom of the sheets correspond to the number of teams. The novice schedules use the codes c and d while the open ones use the codes a and b. All of the teams from any one school must be on the same side of the draw, e.g. all of the SJR open teams would be a and all of the novice teams as d, so that they never debate against each other. You can set this up based just on the registration but often there will be some last minute changes depending on who signs up. This way if there is a last minute change, you can easily accommodate it just by switching the codes for 1 or 2 teams. I would suggest that you print off the sheets that correspond to the number of teams that you expect and sheets for 2 to 4 fewer teams and 2 to 4 more teams, just in case. You can than either post or print copies of the correct ones when the teams arrive and you find out how many you teams actually have. You need to fill in the room numbers.
A program (Mac computers) that can generate pairings automatically is available from Chris George on the QSDA site. This one involves entering the teams from each school and then, at the click of a button, the draw (pairings) are generated. The one drawback is that, if one team doesn't appear, or one appears late, you need to redo the draw, so it is better to use it as the teams register. The page also has programs (both Mac and Windows versions) for doing the draw for bracketed tournaments, i.e. ones where after each round, the teams with the same win-loss record debate against each other. The program works very well but is more complicated. We do not normally use bracketing in Manitoba because it normally involves more time and rounds than we have available. Click here to get to the page.
10 - Tabulation: You can download the tab template by clicking the file called Debate tab template in the attachment area below. You need a computer with a printer and the program Excel. Ideally you want at least two people in the tab room, one to read scores and the other to enter. They must be reliable, careful and trustworthy. They should not discuss the scores with anyone other than the organizer. After the scoresheets are entered, they are photocopied and sorted so that one copy can be given to each school at the conclusion of the tournament after the awards. If you do not have time to photocopy the results during the tournament, you can mail them out later but it saves work and is more popular to give the scoresheets out on the night of the tournament. A template for the tabulation can be downloaded below. On this template the Tab room workers enter whether the team is novice/open in column A, the school name in column C, the team code in column D, and the student names in column E. They then enter the scores from each judge in each round scores from the scoresheets are entered into the appropriate columns (L to P for round 1, Q to U for round 2, etc.). If you have only 1 judge you only need to enter 1 score for that round; the computer will ignore the blank cells. The 0's in the first cell are just there to avoid getting an error message and they will be replaced as you enter the scores. The total team scores, total individual scores and averages for each round are calculated automatically. Save the results after each round under a different file name. After you have entered all of the data you can sort the spreadsheet by the appropriate columns to determine the top individuals, the top teams and the top person from each school. Be certain to save before doing this, and then afterwards.
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