What to expect at a tournament

Guidelines for Coaches and Debaters

Like any activity, there are a number of unwritten assumptions that are part of debating tournaments. That can be confusing for coaches and students who are unaware of them. This document is intended to provide some additional information about what to expect at tournaments. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact your provincial association.

1.     There is usually an initial maximum number of teams allowed per school, but you are welcome to ask to bring more. If you ask and there is space, the organizer will let you know how many additional teams you are allowed to send. During the tournament, all of the competitors debate at the same time in different rooms with 2 teams and 1 to 3 judges in each room. There is usually no audience in the room, although sometimes parents or a couple of friends may watch. 

2.     Schools often need to bring judges with the teams that they send. Judges do normally not need to be experienced. Parents, friends (older than high school age) and teachers are possible sources for judges, Judges for senior events may not be high school students. In some provinces judges for junior events may be in grade 10 or older.

3.    If the topic is a prepared topic, it will be sent out with the invitation or shortly aftrwards. If it is an impromptu topic, it will be announced at the tournament, usually 15 to 30 minutes before the round starts. Once an impromptu topic is given out, teams must prepare for the impromptu debate on their own without help from pre-prepared notes, electronic devices, debaters on other teams, coaches, adults, etc.

4.     Coaches will not judge their own students, unless the organizer has specifically approved, something that will only happen when there is no other option.

5.     If coaches are just watching rather than judging a debate, they should not make comments during or after the debate, although they may make comments to their own students privately after the debate.

6.     In some provinces, students will dress more formally for debates. That is sometimes an expectation and is encouraged, but is not required so it should never be a barrier to someone debating.

7.     Resolutions must be defined in a straightforward way, i.e. an interpretation that the average person on the street would accept as a reasonable interpretation of the resolution. In some cases the organizer may limit the definition and those limitations must be followed. Definitions cannot use time/place sets (i.e. specify a particular place or time that the debate will take place in, e.g. the British cabinet during the Battle of Britain) or squirrel (i.e. change the meaning of the resolution to something different) the resolution, unless the organizer explicitly allows it -- they usually don't -- so do not worry about it. 

8.     Students may use points of information at most tournaments. This involves a student trying to ask a question during another student's speech, normally by standing and say"POI" or "Point of Information".  As a guideline, ideally students should offer 2 per speech but they should not be too frequent, i.e. at least 20 seconds between them. Students should accept 1 or 2 per speech. Students do not have to use points of information but students who use them well should get additional marks.

9.   The draw or list of teams that are debating against each other is set up by the host.  If there are an odd number of teams in a category, the organizer may move a team from one category to another to balance numbers or can use a “swing team”, i.e. an additional team to balance numbers. In order to balance numbers, in some provinces the organizer may split a team, but only with the coach’s agreement, so that each team member debates on their own as a one person team, often called iron-manning.

10.  Hybrid teams, i.e. teams with members from 2 different schools, are not normally used in most provinces but can be permitted by the organizer if there are students whose partners don’t show up, or if a school does not have enough debaters to field a full team, or for a swing team. Hybrid teams should not be used to produce super-teams, i.e. the best debaters from 2 different schools in one team. That being said, the organizer may allow hybrid teams even if those reasons don’t apply. 

11.  Awards are usually presented to the top speakers and teams overallt. In some provinces the top speaker from each school also gets an award. In some provinces the team awards are based on total speaker’s scores while others use the teams win-loss record using the speakers scores to differentiate among teams with the same win-loss record. .

12.  Organizers may try to avoid scheduling teams from the same school against each other, although it sometimes can occur.