IX Sectionals

Rd 1– South America

Rd 2 –Europe (including Russia)

Rd 3 – Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan

Semi (if necessary)– England

Final – Africa

IX State

Rd 1 – Asia & Oceania

Rd 2 – Global Issues

Rd 3 – China 

Quarters – Canada, Central America, & the Caribbean

Semi – Iran, Iraq & Israel

Final – The Middle East (Kurdistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Russia)

USX Sectionals

Rd 1 – Justice issues

Rd 2 – Health

Rd 3 – Elections - general

Semi – Business

Final – Impeachment

USX State

Rd 1 – Trump & the GOP

Rd 2 – 2020 election

Rd 3 – Congress

Quarters: Democratic Primary

Semi – Economy & Education

Final – Foreign Policy

Ever Wonder How Those Pesky Extemp and Impromptu Topics Are Decided?

By Chris Lowery, Chesterton High School IHSFA Extemp Chair

About seven years ago, I took over as the Event Chair for Extemp and Impromptu for the IHSFA.  The main purpose of this committee is to prepare topics for the sectional and state tournament series.  The process is a simple one, but it is nice for everyone to know that there is a system in place.  Although why you always manage to draw the three worse questions in the envelope still can’t be explained by me or your coach. 

The process involves the Extemp chair writing and gathering as many questions as possible from any news source.  A normal tournament only needs to write 24 questions for IX and DX.  This allows them to combine areas in a number of ways.  For our postseason, there need to be 172 different questions for each extemp; across 11 different and non-overlapping categories.  Besides writing many of the topics myself, I gather them from tournaments around the US, open source material (such as the NSDA’s practice questions), and from any coach that wants to send them to me.  This year, I gathered/wrote 267 international questions and 343 domestic questions. 

Once the questions are written, they are sent out to the six other coaches on the Extemp Committee in order to be rated on a scale from 5 – 1.  The aggregate rating remains with the question throughout the sorting process. 

                Not all questions are winners, here were this year’s lowest rated DX/IX Questions

DX: 

IX: 

After the questions are all rated, I attempt to group them into like-minded categories.  Sometimes this means that categories get combined in order to make a well rated category (such as this year with Education and the US Economy).  Other times, categories get separated because there are an abundance of well rated questions (such as this year with the Middle East).  Once we have 12 different questions for each category, I take the average rating of the questions in the category and assign a round based upon that rating.  The top rated category is the state final round (IX – Middle East (average of the questions is 4.58 out of 5); DX – Foreign Policy  (average of the questions is 4.71).  The worst rated category gets burned in sectional Semifinals, as few sectionals have enough numbers to warrant a semifinal (IX – England; DX – Business) and the next worst category is utilized in Sectional finals (as you have already qualified for state at that point and are just fighting over seeding).  I slightly shift this order to make sure there isn’t too much overlap, but here is the order after the questions are rated and sorted into categories