Tarheel Forensic League State Championship

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A list of entry requirements

REGISTRATION POLICY

Registration for this tournament is open ONLY to head coaches of record at the TFL member school. Your registration request must be approved by the tournament director. TFL will not allow students or parents access to the registration portion of this site. Please make sure that the faculty coach of record for your school is applying for registration permission. It will be checked against TFL records before you are allowed to complete the registration process.

COACH SUPERVISION RULE

This policy, found on page 2 of the state manual will be strictly enforced: "At minimum, the Head Coach of Record must be present with his or her school for the entire duration of the tournament. That coach is also required to be present for tournament registration on Friday afternoon. If anyone other than the official head coach will be supervising the team, the school must present the TFL Executive Committee a letter to that effect signed by both the head coach and school principal. If any team is found at any time without the coach of record or officially approved adult chaperone on campus during tournament hours, the entire school will be disqualified from the tournament and a letter will be written to the school principal. All teams must be supervised at all times while they are on the host campus."

FEES

SCHOOL FEE: Teams who have not yet paid their TFL dues for the year will pay $75 in dues in addition to other applicable tournament fees. Teams who paid their TFL dues prior to the tournament will not owe a school fee.

STUDENT ENTRY FEES: $20 per student entry. A Duo Interpretation team or a Public Forum team would be $40.

NEW SCHOOL FEE CREDIT:  Any school that is a first time TFL member this year or has not joined the league anytime in the last four years will receive a one time credit on entry fees and league membership dues of up to $200.  Please contact TFL Chair Keith Pittman if you think your school may be eligible.  This credit may not be applied to judge bond, hired judge fees or judge drop fees.

JUDGE BOND: Each school will submit a check separate from registration fees in the amount of $100 to be held as a JUDGE BOND. This check will be returned to the school un-cashed at the end of the tournament if all judges from the school show up for all of their assigned rounds.

HIRED JUDGE FEES: $80 per PF or IE judge. There are no congress or LD judges for hire. You must meet your congress judge obligation or drop the proportionate number of congress entries. 

JUDGE DROP FEES: Teams who drop judges after Wednesday, March 4 will be charged the hired judge fee above plus a $100 judge drop fee. Please replace any dropped judges.

CONTESTANT DROP FEES: There will be no drop contestant fees through Wednesday, March 4 at 5 PM. After Wednesday, March 4, drops will simply pay their original registration fee as long as the drop is made on SpeechWire or reported to the Tournament Director.. However, drops that are unreported once the tournament begins will be assessed a $100 penalty per drop.

JUDGE QUOTAS

NOTE:  ALL JUDGE QUOTAS ARE FOR THE ENTIRE TWO DAY DURATION OF THE TOURNAMENT.  
SINGLE DAY JUDGES WILL ONLY COUNT AS A HALF JUDGE AND MUST BE COMPLEMENTED WITH A DIFFERENT NAME FOR THE OTHER DAY IN ORDER TO RECEIVE FULL JUDGE CREDIT.

LINCOLN DOUGLAS: 1 judge per 3 LD debaters or fraction thereof.  LD judges may NOT be hired.

PUBLIC FORUM: 1 judge per 3 PF teams or fraction thereof.  Hired Public Forum judges are $80 each.

POLICY (CX) DEBATE:  2 judges per team.  CX judges must also be available to judge LD and PF.  CX judges may NOT be hired.

SPEECH/INTERP EVENTS: 1 judge per 5 individual entries. Double entries count as two entries toward this quota. Duo teams count as one entry toward this quota   Hired speech judges are $80 each.

CONGRESS: 1 judge per ten congress entries. Schools with over 10 entries are required to make one of their judges a parliamentarian. Congress judges may NOT be hired.  Congress judges may also be asked to judge LD, PF or Speech/Interp, depending on the number of congress chambers.

NO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS MAY BE USED AS JUDGES DURING THE STATE CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT.   LAST YEAR'S HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES CANNOT JUDGE THE EVENT IN WHICH THEY COMPETED LAST YEAR UNLESS THERE IS A NOVICE DIVISION OF THAT EVENT.  THEY MAY, HOWEVER, BE CALLED ON TO JUDGE OTHER EVENTS.

The TFL Executive Committee shall aid a school in finding qualified judges if finding the necessary number of judges becomes impossible for a school. All requests for "hired" judge assistance will be assessed at the rate of $80.00 each..  If a school anticipates the need to hire a judge, this request must be made of the TFL Chairperson (Keith Pittman) no later than Wednesday, February 18, 2015.

All school judges are required to be available for the entire tournament, including all elimination rounds through finals.

DOUBLE ENTRY POLICY

There will be no triple entry allowed at the TFL State Championship. However, double entry will be allowed as follows:

LD, PUBLIC FORUM AND CONGRESS: No double entry allowed.

SPEECH/INTERP EVENTS: We will be patterning our individual events this year. Students are strongly encouraged to enter events in opposite patterns. However, we will allow double entry within the same pattern as long as the students know that they must move quickly to their second event and the tournament cannot be held up by students who have doubled in the same pattern. Again, it is strongly preferred (but not required) that students double in opposite patterns.  TFL accepts no responsibility for students who double enter within the same pattern and miss a round in one of their events.

Patterns are as follows:
PATTERN A: DI, HI, OO, EXT, EXPO
PATTERN B: IMP, OI, DUO, RAD

EVENT RULES

Complete event descriptions and rules can be found in the TFL Tournament Manual. However, please note that we will be using the January - February Lincoln-Douglas topic and the February Public forum topic. Also please note that Oral Interpretation will rotate rounds of prose and poetry. Students in OI should come prepared with two different pieces - one of only poetry and one of only prose. Download the complete tournament manual here.

SWEEPSTAKES & TROPHY POLICY

Please carefully read TFL's new Sweepstakes policy on pages 31-32 of the TFL manual.  Sweepstakes is now calculated with half of the points coming from debate events and half coming from speech events using a weighted percentage derived from a team's raw sweepstakes points.  

Additionally, to qualify for sweepstakes points, an event must have at least 12 entries and participation from at least 25 percent of schools in attendance at the state tournament.

Trophies will only be offered in events with 12 or more entries.

Policy Debate, Expository Speaking and Radio Announcing are considered experimental events this year and will not be eligible for sweepstakes points.

FINAL MANDATORY REGISTRATION
MARCH 6 AT RENAISSANCE SOUTHPARK HOTEL - IMPORTANT POLICY!

SpeechWire will remain open until 10 AM Friday.  All drops should be entered by that time.   A required on-site registration will take place from 10 AM to 1 PM at The Renaissance Charlotte SouthPark.   The TFL Committee has voted unanimously that coaches from ALL schools, including local schools must attend this registration in person at some point within the designated hours. We cannot make exceptions to this rule so all coaches should please plan to be at final registration in person. You should not bring your team to the registration desk but you should be able to confirm that all of your entries are accounted for or dropped.   Please note: no team may participate in Round One before checking in and paying all fees that are due.

POLICY REGARDING OBSERVERS IN ROUNDS

All ELIMINATION rounds at the TFL State Tournament are open to observers. Visitors (observers) will be allowed in elimination rounds of each event until the room reaches capacity, as long as the judges and contestants have an unobstructed area reserved in which no visitor can see the ballots being written by judges.

Preliminary rounds are CLOSED to coaches, judges and competitors. Visitors not in those categories may observe preliminary rounds with the permission of the TFL Chair or Vice Chair under the conditions noted in the TFL Manual.