West Kansas District Qualifier

for the 2024 National Tournament

Hello West Kansas Coaches!

It’s hard to believe we are really headed into the end of the season. Our last remaining national qualifying tournament is the IE qualifier at McPherson High School on April 19^thand 20^th. This message includes information about the IE qualifying tournament, district awards, and the World School’s Team application/selection process.

Let’s start with the IE Qualifier at McPherson HS:

Dates: April 19 and 20, 2024

Events: OO, INFO 10, DI, HI, DUO, POI, USX, and IX

Entry Fee: $12.00 per student, per event

Judge Requirement: 1 judge for every 5 entries, or portion of 3 entries. IN ADDITION to that number, the head coach on site needs to be added to the pool. We are planning on having 2 judges in each round.

JUDGE NOTES:1. Schools will have to cover their judge requirement or drop entries. We can’t “cover” judges for folks. 2. IF you put “filler” entries in to help get qualifiers, you can subtract those entries from your judge requirement, BUT those entries will only be in the first round. If they stay in, you need to cover the judge requirement!

Limits: 4 entries per event. You are also limited on entries based on your schools members and degrees. This can be found on page 90 of the Unified Manual:High School Unified Manual 2023-2024

Eligibility: Competitors MUST be paid NSDA members 7 days before the start of the tournament.. in order to compete Schools need to be active NSDA chapters and need to have paid their West Kansas NSDA dues.

Double Entry Forms: Every student entered in more than one event (including any other event from the district tournament series) must submit a preference form before the tournament begins. This must also be done in Tabroom.

Orations and Informative Check in:

Contestants must have a MLA Bibliography of all sources/materials used.No more than 150 quoted wordsmay be used. In the next week or so, we will share with each link to a folder must be in the folder for your school’s speeches. The final copies of speeches and works cited need to be in the folder by the beginning of Round 1.

POI/DI/HI/DUO Piece Check: You will be required to upload a complete and full bibliography and list of pieces viatabroom.com. If you do not have everything listed, your entry will not be scheduled. Please make sure that you collect this information and that it is accurate. You should bring a printed copy of your material with lines used highlighted and any transitions written in. You must also have the original published materials and/or be able to prove that they are NSDA approved. We wanted to remind you of this especially for POI’s so you could begin gathering materials.

Tabroom Link for IE Tournament:https://www.tabroom.com/user/enter/entry.mhtml?chapter_id=19464&tourn_id=29636

Schedule:

Friday, April 19

Registration 3:00 pm

Opening Ceremony -- 3:30 pm

Round 1- 4 pm Friday: All events

Round 2- 6 pm Friday: All events

Saturday, April 20

Round 3 - 8 am Saturday: All Events

Finals - 10 am Saturday: All Events

Double Qualifier Choices -- ASAP

Awards – ASAP

DISTRICT AWARDS

All award nominations are due by April 16, 2024. Your nominations will be forwarded to the District Committee through the District Chair. Please take a few minutes and nominate some worthy folks!

**Student of the Year- Nominate a graduating senior here:https://www.speechanddebate.org/student-of-the-year-nomination-form/

**Coach of the Year- Nominate a head coach here:

https://www.speechanddebate.org/high-school-coach-of-the-year-nomination-form/

**New Coach of the Year - nominate a first year coach here:
https://www.speechanddebate.org/new-coach-of-the-year-nomination-form/

**Assistant Coach of the Year- nominate an assistant coach here:

https://www.speechanddebate.org/assistant-coach-of-the-year-nomination-form/

**Administrator of the Year- nominate a worthy/supportive administrator here:

https://www.speechanddebate.org/high-school-administrator-nomination-form/4

In addition to these awards, we have two awards that do NOT go through the national office. These areAlumni Achievement and Communicator of the Year. Both of these normally go to West Kansas Alumni, but the Communicator award can certainly go to a coach who’s involved in some form of advocacy in or out of Speech and Debate world.

If you want to nominate someone for either of these, send Russ an email.

World Schools Application Information

The district is allowed 2 World School’s teams, with up to 5 students per team. The District Committee will select the teams from applications submitted by students during the IE tournament. The committee will prioritize building teams that are as potentially competitive as possible. Any student may apply, but it is important to know this is a debate event, and debate experience matters!

Application: https://forms.gle/3E9A4dmUphpYHo1z6

Fee: $12 per applying student.

Deadline: April 18, 2024 at 4:00pm.

**Schools that have students make the teams may need to help with coaching, judging, or expenses related to coaching or judging.

**Students who apply will have expectations for team meetings which will mostly happen by Zoom.