NSDA District Tournament

NFL District Tournaments are held each year by the National Speech and Debate Association to determine the qualifiers to the National Speech and Debate Tournament in speech, debate, and Student Congress. Each district tournament is hosted by an NSDA District, which is made up of a set of schools in a given geographic region.

Like many tournaments of the National Speech and Debate Association, District Tournaments are annual tournaments.

Eligibility

According to the NFL District Manual, District Tournaments do require some form of eligibility towards the National Tournament. In order to participate at any District Tournament, a competitor must:

• Be an NFL Official Member: The Competitor must have at least 25 Points, and have supplied the $15 membership Fee
• Have no more than 9 Semesters of Secondary Education: The Competitor must have graduated from Middle School, or Junior High, on a timely fashion of 6-7 Semesters.
• Met the State Age and Eligibility Requirements of Competition: Each district in a given State has age Requirements. However many of them accept ages 13-19.

If the Competitor has met these District Requirements, then he or she is Eligible to participate in the District Tournament.

Entry Limits

According to the NFL District Manual, the following are the entry limits on all events:

• Speaking/Acting Events: Speaking or acting events such as: Original Oratory, Foreign Extemporaneous Speaking, Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, and Duo Interpretation require no more than 4 competitors or teams from each participating district school.
• Debate: All of the debate events such as: Public Forum Debate, Lincoln-Douglas, and Cross Examination require no more than 4 debaters or teams competing in either event from any participating district school.

National Qualifying

In debate events (Policy, PFD, and LD), qualifiers are determined by a double-elimination tournament which runs until the number of debaters left in the tournament is the same as the number of qualifying slots.

Speaking events may be run in different ways:

• In one form, several power-protected preliminary rounds are followed by semifinal and final rounds. The total scores over the course of the tournament (including the semifinal and final rounds, which have more judges than the earlier rounds) determine the national qualifiers from the final round. "Power-protected" means that the competitors in each round (after the first, which is paired randomly) are selected such that a gradient of low-scoring and high-scoring students are included in each round (in other words, the top competitors at any point in the tournament are "protected" from competing against one another).
• Another form roughly represents the double-elimination style of the debate tournaments. Instead of wins and losses, competitors are awarded "ups" (for being in the top half of the room) and "downs" (for being in the bottom half of the room). Competitors are eliminated after two downs. Once the number of competitors is sufficiently small to fit into one room (usually 6), a final round is held and the appropriate number qualify to nationals.

In Student Congress, the district tournament is often held separately from the speech and debate competitions. The competition and scoring can be carried out in many different formats depending on each district committee's preferences.

National Entries

To determine how many entries a district may send to nationals, the number of competitors at the district level is evaluated. Additionally, any district that does not have 16 charter chapters or enter at least 700 entries at the District Tournament over a three year period for two consecutive years, and has not increased its members and degrees by at least 15% over the previous year is limited to no more than one entry in each event.

Speech and LD Debate

• 4-11 entrants: 1 qualifier
• 12-37 entrants: 2 qualifiers
• 38-57 entrants: 3 qualifiers
• 58 or more entrants: 4 qualifiers

Policy Debate, Public Forum Debate and Duo Interpretation

• 4-9 teams entering: 1 qualifying team
• 10-29 teams: 2 qualifying teams
• 30-49 teams: 3 qualifying teams
• 50+ teams: 4 qualifying teams

Bonus Entrant System

For the 2006 to 2007 school year, the NFL authorized a trial system to award extra entries into the national tournament to those tournaments with exceptionally large numbers of, or exceptional growth in, members and degrees. Districts which can normally qualify two entries in each event, and gain 1200 or more members and degree the previous school year are eligible to send 3 entries to the National Tournament in each event. Districts that can normally qualify at least one entrant in each event, and have either earned 900 or more new members and degrees over the school year or increase their members and degrees by 20% or more over the previous school year is eligible to send 2 entries in each event to the national tournament.

References

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