The ACTAA TAC Committee met at the 2024 Fall Conference on 09/20/2024 and Sean Petersen, TAC Chair, hereby puts out the following notes and summations of discussions from the TAC Forum Meeting to inform and guide Tournament Directors and competitive coaches for the 24’-25’ competitive season. 

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to clarify LD topics that are used by early tournaments for Jr. High division and perhaps think twice before using the Novice topic as these students will have the opportunity to debate that topic their Novice year of high school. 

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to recognize that if junior high students are going to be charged the same as high school students, there should be parity in judging, awards, and experience if entry costs are comparable.  

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to provide quality judges who can give high level quality and adjudication in Jr. High rounds and that student judges should only judge Jr. High students if they have 250 NSDA points. 

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to, in the current economy, to be mindful of raising costs at tournaments be those entry fees, judging fees, school fees, and concessions prices. Costs continue to escalate while students and family costs can stifle competitive entries. We were reminded that entry fees can not turn a profit for a tournament per AAA policy and instruction and must be kept low for all students are able to attend. 

• Coaches and Tournament Directors are encouraged to reexamine their culture of entering students in more that one draw events. Additionally the collected members wanted to stress that double entry in draw events harms tournaments and causes rounds and tournaments as a whole to run late. Please refrain from entering students into two different draw events at tournament (Ex: Extemp and IPDA) 

• There was a discussion of a return to Individual Events and Acting events returning to Saturday only competition. We agreed that this choice is best left with individual tournaments and directors as the size of tournaments varies and there should be no “one size fits all” rule.

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to take great care in drafting tournament invites to include all details on event times, judge requirements and other important information of note. It is incumbent on attending coaches to make sure to fully read each tournament’s invitation to know any changes from year to year before registering for all tournaments held in our state. When in doubt, coaches should reach out to Tournament Directors for clarification well in advance of any contest. 

• Coaches and Tournament Directors are encouraged to include and be explicit in their arrival details for the tournament and try as best they can to respect these instructions or contact tournament directors in advance if a team may be arriving earlier than the start time established in the invite. 

• Coaches and Tournament Directors are encouraged to clarify IPDA rules for prep, computer usage, times, weighing and other procedures of the event. If coaches and Tournament Directors need clarification of the rules of the IPDA format, please contact the IPDA High School Committee (Daniel Caudle offered to be the point person, his email address is daniel.caudle@sdale.org) or consult the IPDA established rules at the IPDA website at http://www.ipdadebate.info/constitution--bylaws.html. 

• Coaches and Tournament Directors are encouraged to highlight what Tournament Etiquette is and to stress to their teams that students should be professional in their interactions with adults at tournaments, watch their language, not run, etc. The committee briefly discussed that perhaps drafting a ACTAA Etiquette Guide as a base level of team expectation may be helpful, but no actions were taken towards that end. 

• The TAC Committee assembled encourages all coaches to note that if you have a Missing Judge Fee or Nuisance Fee for not having judges for your entries at tournaments that requesting that additional members of that school’s adult chaperone (be it parent of Coach)to  judge, as it is not a standard for our tournament circuit. If the school paid the Missing Judge or Nuisance Fee then they should be free of judging requirements and those fees should go to help recruiting or hiring judges for the tournament. We also discussed the difference between a Missing Judge and Nuisance Fee and when it is acceptable to include tournament fees and that they should be kept reasonable and not excessive as it limits those in our community who can compete. 

• Tournament Directors are encouraged to take note of judge overuse and to diversify the judging pool in all events. Additionally, Tournament Directors are encouraged to not overuse Coach judges so that we can be helpful to our teams at competitions. Often parent judges brought by teams report not getting judging rounds, Tournament Directors should make an effort to utilize all judges in the pool for preliminary rounds to allow for more qualified/ coach judge availability in elimination rounds.

• The TAC Committee assembled encourages all coaches to utilize the Neutrality notation in Tabroom.com to allow for judges to show their judging strikes or openness. Judges and Coaches need to make sure these settings are done before arriving at tournaments, but the fix is fairly easy and most Tabroom directors and assistants can help with these settings before rounds get underway if need be. Additionally, please have Judges use the notes feature in Tabroom to help better direct them if they have specific aspects that the tournament may need to know prior to judge pairing.

• The TAC Committee assembled encourages all coaches to maintain professional conduct when interacting with their teams both at their school and at tournaments. Teenagers talk and information and negative opinions often get back to teams that can cause animosity and upset. If we can’t stop focusing on our negative opinions our students will pick up on that and carry those negative associations to competitions. We should endeavor to be professional and positive whenever possible as Coaches and leaders of our teams. 

• The TAC Committee assembled encourages all coaches that the Grievance procedures of individual tournaments and of ACTAA as an organization should be reviewed and utilized as needed. Please keep in mind that these may differ, individual grievance complaints for individual tournaments should be outlined and highlighted in tournament instructions in the tournament invitation, and ACTAA’s Grievance Procedure per its Ethic Committee can be found on the ACTAA website, actaa.org/Governing-Documents.