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Tournament Schedule & Format

Dear Debaters:

The Belmont Hill Lyceum cordially invites you to its annual debate tournament on Sunday, April 10, 2016. The style of the debate will be Oregon prepared. This year we have chosen the following resolution:

This House should pass S.268, the “Rebuild America Act of 2015.”

There will be three rounds of debate, and debaters will argue on the same side of the resolution for each of the three rounds.

There will be novice and advanced divisions, and schools are invited to enter two teams in each division. Each team consists of four people. The charge for each four-person team is sixty dollars, and ten dollars per observer. Please send a check made out to Belmont Hill School or bring one on the day of the debate.

Each four-person team must supply a judge. We will not be able to supply judges.

Please RSVP by Friday, April 1, by email to jtift@belmonthill.org, indicating how many advanced and/or novice teams you plan to bring and the names of the debaters (although the names may follow in a later email).

Also, on the morning of the debate, please call 781-859-7256 if you have any changes; this will greatly facilitate the registration process.

Breakfast will be available for debaters, judges, coaches, and observers upon their arrival in the morning, and lunch will be available while the results are tabulated in the afternoon.

We hope you can join us, and we look forward to seeing you on April 10.

Sincerely,
Jeanne Tift

Dear Fellow Coaches,
Because of the collision of two forces fundamentally at odds with each other (Spring Vacation and the need for Lincoln-Douglas debaters to write two speeches ahead of time and learn a new activity), I would like to announce a new framework for our Larry A. Smith Invitational Tournament this year.

It will be essentially an Extemporaneous Pairs event with a few wrinkles, including two cross-examination periods (after the first two speeches, one per side) and modified speech times for Constructive and Rebuttal speeches, as follows:

Preliminaries (20 mins): Topic read, coin toss/sides picked, topic def (5 mins), prep time (10 mins)
First AFF 5 mins.
c-x 2.5 minutes (open cross-ex; second NEG leads)
First NEG 5 mins
c-x 2.5 minutes (open cross-ex; first AFF leads)
Second AFF 5 mins
Second NEG 5 mins

First NEG Rebuttal 3.5 mins
First AFF Rebuttal 3.5 mins.
Second NEG Rebuttal 3.5 mins
Second AFF Rebuttal 3.5 mins.

Prep time per side- 3 minutes

Three Rounds, three topics (straight resolution):
1) mid-east: Syria, ISIS, migrations
2) national election primaries (up-to-date topic)
3) school topic- athletics/extracurriculars

Please join us! I will need to have registration by Wednesday, March 30th. We are a smallish school, so will need to limit registrations to two sets of four per school (initially)- you may send twelve names, certainly, with the understanding that the third foursome will be on stand-by– both Advanced (Varsity) and Novice Divisions will be offered– Trophies offered through top three places in speaker and team results in both divisions–

Best Regards, Happy Spring (upcoming),
Bill Hunter
Hamden Hall
Debate Coach, 1985-