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It is my pleasure to invite you to the AFA District V Qualifier which will be held on Saturday, March 14 on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. I encourage you to attend this tournament as either an AFA qualifier, an NFA qualifier, or as an excellent opportunity to see good competition and support the teams of District V trying to qualify for our national tournament, to be held April 3-6 at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Please note that the AFA-NIET will use a Saturday-Monday schedule, with registration being held on Friday.

The members of District V will have a coaches meeting from 12:15-1:00 p.m. Our agenda at this meeting will consider recent or pending decisions of the AFA-NIET Executive Committee as well as necessary elections. At this meeting, we will also be voting on whom from our district we will want to elect to the All-American Team. If you have students you believe should be placed as nominees, be sure that you bring all materials with you to the tournament. There will also be a student meeting held at the same time. Please encourage your students to attend to nominate and elect our district representative for the 2015-16 AFA season.

Entries are due at 5:00 p.m., CST, Tuesday, March 11th. Please enter using the Speechwire website. All fees will be assessed at noon on Wednesday, March 12th. Please remember that each school may enter up to five competitors in each of the eleven events.

I hope that you will be able to attend the District V Qualifier. Even if your team is not planning on attending the AFA-NIET, I encourage you to attend and support your colleagues. For those of you who are NFA-only, remember you can earn NFA qualifications at the District tournament, and Illinois State will be hosting an NFA Last Chance tournament the next day (March 15). It can be a challenge to get nine schools for our District tournament, so I would encourage you to please make every effort to send students.

Don't forget that you don't need to wait until you arrive in DeKalb to submit tab sheets for qualification verification - in fact I'd prefer electronic tabsheets over the giant binders. Please email or fax copies of complete tab packets to me at mkoch@ilstu.edu or 309-438-3048 at any time between now and the tournament. If you

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because the tournament has been condensed to one day, it will actually run with TWO patterns. We will condense the patterns listed above into two flights, attempting to minimize the number of quadruple-entered competitors.

In an effort to keep tournament costs to a minimum, each slot will cost $3.00. Each uncovered slot will cost $10.00 (to cover hired judge fees). Each judge covers 6 slots. Student drops after noon, Wednesday, March 11th will be $5.00. Judge drops will be $25.00. Student drops at registration will be $10.00 and judge drops will be $75.00.

Please be prepared to send to me beforehand or bring to the tournament any tabulation sheets you have to verify at-large qualifications and legs earned at tournaments prior to the District qualifier.

Please also be prepared to send to me beforehand or bring to the tournament any at-large qualifications you may have so that we can begin the verification process. In order to accomplish this task, we will need the official AFA at-large qualification form for each student on your team which you can access from the AFA-NIET website.

1. Your AFA-NIET entry is due to Larry Schnoor by March 10, 2015. You have until March 16 to submit changes based on the Districts results (with drop fees taking effect on March 17). All entries for the NIET must be submitted via Speechwire. Entry forms submitted any other way will be returned.

2. If you did not pay your AFA dues prior to December 1st, you will be assessed $50 as part of your registration for the District Qualifier. Please make checks payable to AFA District V. Please remember that all schools must have a membership in the AFA parent organization in addition to their NIET membership. Please visit americanforensics.org if you need to purchase an institutional membership (contact me if you think you or someone at your school might already have a membership, and you need to confirm).

3. The NIET invitation is available at afa-niet.org. Please ensure that you also have a copy of the at-large qualification form. If you have questions about completing this form, feel free to contact me.

4. In order to maintain the integrity of such an important tournament, we would like to assemble a knowledgeable and unbiased, qualified judging pool. If you know of any potential hired judges that might be interested in coming to DeKalb for the tournament, please let me know as soon as possible.

5. Student enrollment verification forms (as certified by your school Registrar) must be submitted when you arrive at the District Tournament (this policy became effective as of

6. All-American Nomination info is available at afa-niet.org, and nominations are due at the time of Districts registration. If you don't plan on attending Districts please mail a hard copy of the packet to me at Campus Box 4480 Normal IL 61790 so that it arrives by March 13 (it must be an original hard copy - emailed packets can't be considered). I know the NIET site says that the All-American deadline is March 15, but that is the deadline for the District to get applications to the National committee; schools must have their nominations to me by the time of Districts registration. Packets sent directly to the

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