WINSTON CHURCHILL

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you and your team to the 2021 Winston Churchill Classic hosted on January 7-9, 2021. While the realities of this year have necessitated the shift to an online tournament, we are more committed than ever to hosting the best and most competitive virtual tournament possible and are excited about the possibility for greater competition from around the state and country. As always it is our goal to provide outstanding and highly-preferred judging, a great tabulation staff, and incredible hospitality.

We are proud to have been awarded TOC bids from the University of Kentucky in LD (finals), Gold PF (finals), Silver PF (semifinals), Congress (top 6) and all relevant Speech events. We are also pleased to announce that we are also a NIETOC qualifying tournament in the relevant speech events as well as a TFA qualifying tournament.

In debate events we will feature 6 preliminary debate rounds beginning Thursday afternoon with elimination debates on Saturday. Congressional debate will feature one prelim with semifinal and final rounds to follow. Speech events will be asynchronous and feature two preliminary rounds, and quarters, semis, and finals based on entry numbers. Rounds will be scheduled with respect to both checks on screen-time and time allotted for meals/breaks.

We put a lot of thought into all aspects of tournament hosting and hope that they capture the unique aspects of San Antonio and the Churchill Classic that have allowed us to offer a tournament for over 40 years. We look forward to hosting you in January 2021 and cannot wait to see you all in-person in the future.

TOURNAMENT INFORMATION

Please read all the way through this document as it contains lots of important information.
All tournament tabulation and pairings will occur via tabroom.com and as such, all students, coaches, and judges will need to have an updated (and linked!) tabroom.com account. Information on how to create an account can be found on the TFA website (txfa.org)
Based on the recent success of the platform at recent tournaments and the security that it provides, we will be using NSDA Campus as the tournament video platform. Please read the section below about NSDA Campus thoroughly so that you can ensure that your students do not have any trouble with the platform.

NSDA Campus
After discussing with other coaches and seeing how programs have faired the throughout the first semester, we have made the decision to use NSDA Campus as the tournament video platform. There have been some recent incidents with zoom-bombing via the classrooms.cloud platform and while I am fully confident that those security issues will be resolved by the classrooms.cloud team, we need to make a decision on a platform now so that coaches have ample time to share this information with their students, check the technology requirements, and discuss any necessary changes with their IT departments if they envision students competing from their high school or using school devices. Third, because of how NSDA Campus is set-up, it makes the most sense for flighted rounds so that competitors don’t interrupt the previous flight’s debate.

I would HIGHLY encourage students to test out a competition room and make sure their microphones/cameras work. I recently found out that while I was able to access NSDA Campus utility rooms (tabroom, squad room, etc.) and have my audio/video work, this was not true if I tried to access a competition room while connected to the school WiFi. There appears to be something different between the two room types and you need to make sure you students can access both spaces.

EVENTS OFFERED
-Asynchronous- Dramatic Interpretation, Duet Acting, Duo Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Informative Speaking, Original Oratory, Program Oral Interpretation, Poetry, Prose
Contestants may enter as many asynchronous events as they would like. All speech events will have two preliminary rounds, breaking to quarterfinals if numbers permit. Video submissions for these events will be due at 11:59pm on Sunday, January 3.

-Synchronous-
Extemp: Domestic Extemp, Foreign Extemp
Contestants may cross-enter one extemp event, Congressional Debate, and asynchronous events; cross-entry with other debate events will not be possible in a virtual world.

Congressional Debate: Congressional Debate competitors may cross-enter with one extemporaneous speaking event and as many asynchronous events as they wish.

Debate: Policy Debate, LD Debate, PF Debate. Contestants entered in debate events may not cross-enter with any other events at the tournament.

*If you are an out of state student, you are welcome to attend with your parent as a chaperone as long as they are present at the tournament and you abide by #1, #3, and #4 above. A privately hired assistant coach may fulfill your judging obligations, but they ARE NOT a substitute for your parent/legal guardian unless a principal from your school emails me authorizing them to make medical/liability decisions on your behalf (see above).

***JUDGING***

All judges must have a tabroom.com account and a paradigm on tabroom.com.

All school provided judges are required to be available one round past the elimination of their most successful competitor in the event that they are covering. For debate events this means all judges will be obligated for at least Saturday morning.
To ensure top-notch judging for all participants, we ask that schools provide qualified judging to cover their judging obligations. All debate judges provided must have a paradigm entered on tabroom.com. The tournament reserves the right to deny an entry due to insufficient qualified judging.

Due to multiple school judges not picking up debate ballots in the past, we will be fining schools $50 per round for any judge who either doesn’t pick up a ballot, or who is so late in picking up a ballot that we need to reassign it to another judge. After two no-shows, the judge will be dropped from the tournament and the school will be charged the full judge fee. Judges who are so late to their round and thus must be subbed out will count also count a “no show”. It is up to a each coach to ensure their judges are awake, aware, and ready to judge.

If a school’s judge no-show results in the tournament being short judges we will ask the school’s coach to either fill in or we will have to drop entries in order to have enough judging.

In a world of virtual debate and online ballots, it is important that your judges’ tabroom information (email and phone number) are up to date and that they are frequently checking their phone/email to ensure they do not miss a ballot. It is the obligation of coaches to ensure this info is up to date and to check pairings and ensure that their judges are prepared to judge.

DEBATE TOPICS AND CONGRESS INFORMATION
· The topic for CX Debate is: Resolved: The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following: forensic science, policing, sentencing.

The topic for LD Debate will be the Jan/Feb 2021 topic.
The topic for PF Debate will be the January 2021 topic.

Prep time for CX is 8 minutes. Prep time for LD is 4 minutes. Prep time for PF is 2 minutes.
We will use the NSDA pilot rules for PF.

· Brackets will not be broken in debate.
CONGRESS NOTES: We will use the TFA 2021 Spring Legislation. Student Congress legislation to be debated in each session is listed below. The items may be reordered as established by each chamber. Copies of the legislation can be found on the TFA website at txfa.org. Procedures for advancing and tie-breakers can be found in the TFA constitution.

CONGRESS LEGISLATION

Prelims (Domestic Policy): 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 18
Semis (International Relations): 3, 4, 15, 19, 21, 27
Finals (Economy, Energy, Environment): 10, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23

Other Congress specific things to note:
--Student POs will be used in all rounds
--Direct Questioning will be used in all rounds
-- Time for debate per legislation item should last no more than one-third of a session’s floor time. If action has not been taken on the legislation by that time, an immediate vote shall be taken.
--Pre-set precedence charts will be used for both speaking and questioning in all rounds in accordance with TFA vIQT rules

AWARDS
Even though this tournament is online, we believe that students should be recognized for their achievements. As such, awards will be presented to all debate quarterfinalists and speech finalists. Sweepstakes awards will also be given to the top 5 schools. We have taken a lot of pride and care in choosing awards that uniquely represent the Churchill Classic and San Antonio well and we are committed to ensuring that process continues. Trophies will be shipped to each school and sent to the address provided for refund information. If extreme circumstance requires us to ship trophies directly to students, we will look into the price of doing so and try to work with the schools to figure that out.

SWEEPSTAKES
Individual Events, Congressional Debate, Duet Acting, Duo Interpretation

1st = 15 points 2nd = 10 points 3rd = 5 points

All non-placing finalists receive three points. Debate Sweepstakes points will be calculated based off of prelim performance in debate events. Students will earn 5 points per prelim win and 2 points per prelim loss, only a school’s top 2 students per debate event will be counted.

GENERAL RULES

We will break to Semifinals in all Individual Events unless entry levels warrant a break straight to quarterfinals. If entry numbers in an event are low, we will move to 2 prelim rounds and breaks directly to finals.

All W/L or rank results for Debate, Congress, and IEs will be made available as soon as possible after the completion of each round. Problems or questions should be directed to the tabroom as soon as possible.

NOVICE EVENTS
We believe that all years, but especially this year, participation in novice debate is essential to building and growing the activity. As such, all novice competitors will be guaranteed five rounds of debate with an appropriate number of elimination debates. It is our hope that due to decreased travel barriers, all novice debate divisions will provide great competition to your first-year debaters. Just as with varsity divisions, all quarterfinalists will receive awards for their accomplishments.

For this tournament, a novice is defined as a competitor who is in their first school year of competitive high school debate of any sort; all middle school competitors are allowed to enter the novice division.
--A student who began debating in March of last year is NOT a novice
--A student who has competed in LD but now wants to do PF is NOT a novice. This applies to all novice divisions.
--A 8th grade student who competed in 6th and 7th grade IS a novice.

We believe that debates are the most educational when all competitors have the ability to understand and prepare for their opponents arguments. While we would prefer if varsity competitors disclosed their arguments, we believe that this is essential for novice competition and as such will be asking all novice competitors to disclose arguments on the appropriate wikis:

Policy Wiki
LD Wiki
PF Wiki

Additionally in NCX, we will be using the NDCA Novice Packet. Students who wish to read arguments/evidence that is not included in the novice packet should be entered in the VCX division.

JUDGING
It is our preference that high schools provide qualified judging for their novice entries. Quality feedback is important to debater growth and development and all judges will be asked to type thorough decisions and comments. We will allow schools to enter varsity students as judges for the novice division, however, those students should have 3-4 years experience, be responsible, and provide students with the same level of attention and feedback that they would want as competitors. Student judges who give miss rounds, leave rude, unhelpful, or no comments at all may be removed from the pool by the tournament director and a judge fee will be levied.

WINSTON CHURCHILL CLASSIC

6-9 January 2021

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