Rules

Divisons:

• In LD and Policy, a Novice is defined as a first-year debater; a student who debated novice in LD one year cannot debate novice in Policy in a subsequent year, or vice versa. Junior Varsity is defined as a second-year debater. The Novice and JV divisions are limited to those debaters.
• In JV PF, debaters must be either freshmen or sophomores, in either their first or second year of competition.

Awards: Each tournament will award 5 placement medals in each of the 5 divisions. Additionally, 5 speaker awards recognizing individual achievement will be awarded in the 2 Policy divisions.

Judging:

• Each school must cover its own judging at a ratio of 1 judge per 2 teams in Policy, and 1 judge per 4 teams in LD and PF. There are no judges for hire at MHLs.
• Experienced debaters in their junior or senior years only may judge LD or Policy. Debaters in their senior year, any specialty, can judge JV PF.
• Strict judging rules will be enforced. Student judges must fulfill their responsibilities in a mature manner. Flouting the conventions of good judging will not be tolerated; any student judges who are found in violation of these conventions will be removed from the judging pool, along with 2 of their school's teams (if its a policy judge) or 4 of their school's teams (if it's an LD or PF judge); we do not have the luxury of randomly eliminating judges if teams are not also forfeit. For clarity's sake, these good judging conventions include (among other items construable as proper and mature academic behavior): no cell phones; no headphones; arriving at rounds in a timely manner; writing clear, respectful and useful ballots. (It is unfortunate to have to itemize such nonsense, but harmful violations have happened in the past and cannot continue to happen in the future.)
• There is no "trading" of judge assignments. If for some reason a judge is unable to adjudicate an assigned round, this matter must be brought to the attention of the tab room. No one else is allowed to reassign judges, and penalties may accrue for doing so, up to and including the above-mentioned team expulsions.
• Adult judges accompanying teams should be trained in advance by those teams. To enable this training, how-to-judge materials are posted on this website.
• In situations where a school predominates a division pool, teams may debate other teams from their own school. We will insure that these rounds are adjudicated by a neutral party, and that no team debates intramurally more than once a tournament.

Prep time: Prep time in LD is 5 minutes. Prep time in Policy is 10 minutes. There are no Low Point Wins allowed in any division. PF follows NFL rules.

Registration:

• Pre-registration will be at Tabroom Online, due by 9:00 pm on the Wednesday prior to the tournament; select Mid-Hudson League as the league to register at the top of the landing page. You can manage your entry yourself until the tournament closes; send changes after that to midhudsonleague@gmail.com, but to be honest, it's better if you get it right the first time. When registering, please include a cell phone number for a contact on the morning of an event, if there are problems of any sort and we need to get in touch with somebody. Note that no students will be allowed to enter the tournament without adult (21 or older) supervision. The MHL will not take responsibility for unaccompanied minors.
• Registration at the tournaments will be from 8:30-9:00 on the morning of the event (although we could have a later registration if the tournament is being conducted at an SAT school--we'll keep you posted). Teams not completely registered by 9:00 will forfeit round 1. This is the only way we can get the 4 rounds in for a reasonable day's debating. If you are detained, call 914-382-2661 and provide your information by 9:00.
• With luck, opening assembly should start at 9:30, with rounds immediately following. There will be four rounds at each tournament, with LD most likely being double-flighted.

Cell phones: Just as cell phones will not be tolerated in the hands of the judges, they will not be tolerated in the hands of the debaters. If a student's cell phone rings during a round, it will mean an automatic forfeit for the offending person or team. The opposing person/team will receive a bye for the round.