Day 2
The next day, most likely a Saturday, the speech rounds begin. The same process occurs; speech preliminary rounds cycle through, with some break time in-between rounds. If you are double entered, ie. participating in speech events and have “broken” in debate, you will need to manage your time wisely. You should tell the speech judge that you are double entered and the judge will most likely allow you to perform first. Right after that, get to your debate round if it will start anytime soon. One of the worst things to do to a debate judge is to be late. Speech judges on the other hand can tolerate delay because they have to judge 6-7 people so they can skip people freely.Debate elimination rounds are simply that, elimination rounds. If you lose the round, you are out. Local tournaments usually break to octafinals, meaning 16 people break. Then we move on to quarterfinals (8), then to semifinals (4), and finally to finals (2). Usually semifinals and finals have 3 judges each, and you must simply win a majority of the judges to advance. Speech rounds work a bit differently. In preliminary rounds, as there are 6-7 people per round, each person gets a ranking. If you get a 1, then you were considered the best from that round. To break, you want to shoot for 1,2,2 or better. Speech rounds are unfortunately much more unpredictable as there are many more variations. Speech break rounds work a bit differently, at the semifinal level, you get 3 (usually) rankings and the top half of your round are chosen for finals. Some tournaments evaluate finals with a compilation of rankings from your semifinal round and those rankings you acquired from finals. Other tournaments simply rank you based on your final round performance.
If the tournament is not run on time, which they usually aren’t, be prepared to say at the tournament until 11:00 pm. Yes this is outrageous but for many years, local tournaments consistently experience unexpected setbacks such as lack of judges, technical difficulties, etc. If you are coming home with a trophy, which are usually awarded to semifinalists and finalists, you probably won’t care.
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