Tournament Director's Toolkit

Although I no longer actively coach, I am still very much involved in the running of tournaments. In fact, one might say I am about as expert as one can be in this pursuit—-with the exception of Chris Palmer--having run tournaments of every shape and form for many years, both as director and in the tab room. In this toolkit I share my experience as best I can, providing a collection of documents offered as help for other folks running or thinking about running tournaments. Consider them as suggestions, aids for managing your tournament from start to finish. And please note that they are not intended to reflect the official procedures/rules of the NDCA, where I originally posted most of them: They are simply my thoughts, arranged as well as I could.

Magical Movie Introduction

Latest update to this page: Summer 2022

Introduction

• So you want to run a tournament.
  If you already run a tournament, you don't need this, but it couldn't hurt. If you're just thinking about running a tournament, then definitely start here. A good dose of realism never hurt anybody.

• The Basic Rules of Engagement: The Three Things a Tournament Director Has to Keep in Mind.
  There are three absolute necessities for anyone running any tournament. These are them.

• What do Tournament Customers Want?
  This list is a good representation of what people want from a tournament. We’re going to go down this list in great depth over time, but this sums it up.

Registration

• Announcing Your Tournament
  You need to get the word out to people that your tournament is going to happen. Here's how.

• Setting Tournament Deadlines
  There are realistic ways of organizing the time between deciding to run a tournament and greeting people at the door on tournament day. Following these best practices assures the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, including both you and your guests.
  Part 1: Registration Opens
  Part 2: Deleting TBAs
  Part 3: Shutting Down

• Managing the Waitlist
  If you're running a tournament that isn't open to all comers, no restrictions, then you need a waitlist. Here's the whys, the wherefores, and the how-to. It's not as easy as it looks, and there are best practices in place.
  Addendum: a short note on Listing Entries.

Running the Tournament

• Setting up registration tables at a tournament
  The difference between a smooth registration process and a traffic jam is knowing how tabroom.com works, and how to use it to move people quickly out of the world and into your events. This pdf works regardless of whether you're actually doing your tabbing on tabroom. And consider this a strong recommendation: have an adult (maybe even the tournament director) run registration and, especially, collect the money and enter the amounts collected into the system.

  Judge Management

• 5 Rules of Thumb for Judge Management
  This is the basic strategy, however much you adhere to the tactics that follow.

• Judge expectations We ask a lot of judges at tournaments, and more than anything, we expect them to act as the educators in the room. But what does that mean? What, exactly, are the reasonable expectations for a judge at a high school forensics tournament? This is a general guide to the job that judges should be doing, including knowing the rules of their events, running their rounds professionally, and maintaining educational accountability and propriety. It's provided as a doc file that you can edit as you see fit. I recommend sending this out or posting it early in the week before the tournament.

• How many judges do you really need to run a tournament?
  Short answer: more than you'll ever get.

• Judge obligations/commitments for TDs
  You can do it by-the-round or full-tournament. Which makes sense for you? I think we're pretty clear on it.

• Why MJP? Where MJP came from, and why it's your best choice for judge assignments, with the possible exception of totally random judging. Random does have its supporters, but we're unlikely to see it any time soon at high stakes LD and Policy events. This document can also be useful as a handout for your attendees who might be resistant to the idea, if any still exist. A version of this was originally published in Rostrum.

• MJP in Practice If you're going to use MJP at your tournament, do it right. Including information on handling judges who never get to judge, and use of strikes.
  Addendum: A little wrinkle There are times when MJP overrides other concerns. This is one of them.

• One approach to tournament conflicts, for teams and for judges. A conflict is a situation of too much love, not too little. The primary goal here is to disallow endless strikes under the guise of conflicts, but it also prevents preferential treatment in the other direction. Distribute before every tournament.

• Handling PF Judges Treat them right, and they're yours for life. Also, how to train them.

• A Brief Explanation of Judge Obligations for distribution to judges This is pdf you can distribute to judges, especially of the PF persuasion, who might be new to the activity. Among other things, it explains to them why they need to stay for the elimination rounds when their school is no longer debating.

• An introduction to PF for parent/new judges. This is pdf you can distribute to anyone you'd like. Emailing the link to people is your best bet. If you prefer, here it is as a docx file you can edit your own way. You might use this in conjunction with the NSDA's original handout, which is still one of the best guides to the activity.

• How to handle the assignment of speaker points in debate. This will especially help get new judges, e.g. PF parents, on the same page.

• And let us not forget the speech side of the universe. Here are some materials for speech judges:
  A general guide to speech events and how to judge them from the New York CFL organization;
  How to assign points in speech events, also from the NYCFL;
  An easy series of videos to help newcomers judge speech events.

  A suggested packet to distribute to judges before a tournament might include: Judge expectations, conflicts, A Brief Explanation of Judge Obligations , An introduction to PF for parent/new judges. assigning speaker points, e-ballot instructions, How to be a good e-judge.

  Live Docs

  The Live Doc came out of the need to communicate lots of information before and during a virtual tournament, alhough perhaps it predates the pandemic, and I just never heard about it. Whichever, it is one of the greatest additions to tournament management since the invention of the index card. Live Docs have proven essential in virtual tournaments, and will no doubt in many regions continue to prove similarly essential in real life tournaments. They're just too good an idea to put aside.

  The Live Doc, simply put, contains all the information about your tournament that everyone needs. It is distributed before the tournament, and updated throughout the tournament. End of story.

  We attach 2 pieces here. First, there is a generic pdf for you to read to give you an idea of what one looks like that you can't accidentally mess up, and secondly there is a doc file you can adjust as you see fit.

  Our practice has been to post the Live Doc as a Google Doc, allowing mutltiple tournament staffers access for editing in advance and adding to during the tournament. We usually send the link out a few days prior to the tournament. Too soon is too soon, and too late is too late; Wednesday before a Friday start seems about right.

  E-Tournaments

• Complete Guide to Running an E-Tournament The 2022 guide to virtual tournaments. So far.

• E-Ballot instructions. Using e-ballots and want to make sure your judges are plugged into tabroom.com? First, here are the instructions from one tournament, in a docx file. Edit it with your own wifi specs, and claim it as your own. Or, take this general PDF and distribute it without your own specific site instructions. It is probably a good idea to have a station set up somewhere for your judges to get connected throughout the tournament: often even the most constant of judges find they're no longer plugged into tabroom for some reason or other.

• How to be a Good E-Judge This humorous (?) albeit informative (?) document explains to the judges your expectations of them. Given how often judges don't do things correctly, even if they've been judging since the Pilgrims landed, it's probably a good idea to distribute it every time, or better yet, link to it, since we are talking, uh, technical prowess.
  Updated for virtual tournaments in June 2020 and again in June 2022).
  There have been those who have said that what they really want is a straightforward what-to-do, not a lot of silly jokes. Hence I've begun saying this in my email, and adding a link to the rest of it:
  Executive Summary
  1. Get notification
  2. Hit START button to acknowledge ballot.
  3. Go to room
  4. Enjoy round
  5. Enter decision on device
  6. Provide useful albeit pithy critique
  

  Tournament Miscellany

• Trophy Check List Use this to put in your trophy order.

• Best Practices In business, a best practice is something proven over time. The same is true of debate tournaments.

• Split Obligations If you're allowing coaches to split up their days among their judges, you might find that a lot of them just don't understand how to do it correctly on tabroom. Perhaps this short QuickTime video will help.

• Scheduling How much time is realistic? Make a good schedule that you can adhere to.

• Tab Sure, tabroom.com makes it look easy. It isn't. Here's the rules of thumb for staffing your tab room.

• Emails If your tournament is large and complicated, you'll no doubt be emailing the registrants all sorts of things in advance. Here's how to manage emails so that they are reasonable in number, definitive in information, and most important, likely to be read.

• Comfort See to the comfort of your guests. Good hospitality is good manners, and good business.

• The Concierge Table The ballot table is dead. Long live the Concierge Table!!! This is either the hub of the tournament, or it's where your students with nothing better to do make it impossible for your guests to get information. Which sounds better to you?

• Round Robins There's a couple of things you need to think about, and a tip or two, if you go the RR route.

• There are plenty of ways to figure out how many teams are going to break at what level. For those who want a good old-fashioned, albeit barebones Excel version, download this baby: Pyramid (just clicking on the link probably won't work, but right-clicking and choosing download will answer all your prayers.)

• Novice Divisions What, exactly, is a novice? Definitions vary, but if your tournament isn't rigidly specific, you're asking for trouble.

  Notes for tab staff

• Diaster Preparedness What if you're tootling along at a tournament, running tabroom.com, and suddenly the system goes down? Here's a way to keep your tournament moving; if nothing else, it will keep you busy while you're waiting for tabroom to come back up. Includes both the official backup instructions from tabroom, plus an alternate reality procedure.

• Guide to Tabroom.com: A fairly exhaustive guide to how tabroom's debate tabbing software works, beyond the helps available in the program. Available both as a pdf of the entire guide, and a webpage breaking it down into smaller bite-sized pieces. Since this was written, tabroom has vastly improved its help screens, and this has not been updated lately, but you can print it out and most of it is still accurate. It's certainly still a handy guide for tabroom.com noobs.