Capitol Valley District Qualifier

for the 2026 National Tournament

Main

Welcome to the National Qualifiers for Capitol Valley!

This will be a multi day tournament spread out over three days on two weekends. Congress and Big Questions will be held on March 21st. All other events (except World Schools) will be held the weekend of April 10th-11th (Fri-Sat).

Eligibility

All schools and students must be NSDA members by March 14th for Congress/BQ and April 3rd for other events. This means the school must have paid annual dues and the student must have earned 25 NSDA points and paid their one-time NSDA membership fee. If either of these is a problem, contact us ASAP!!

Students do not need to intend to participate at Nationals in order to participate at National Quals. They can compete for the clout/NSDA points/trophies and drop their qual spots if they choose.

Qual Spots and Entry Limits

In Congress... In the House, there are 2 qualifying spots if we have 16+ House entries. In the Senate, there will be 2 qualifying spots, if we have 6+ schools and 10+ students (otherwise there will be 0 Senate spots). To be safe, we're aiming for a minimum of 30 Congress entries from 7 schools. We can coordinate entries in each chamber to ensure competitive balance.

In all other events, there are 2 qualifying spots (assuming a minimum of 4 entries from 2 different schools are in the event).

Students are limited to 2 events each weekend. Double-entry in Congress and Big Questions is strongly discouragedexcept for students that are primarily intending to qualify in BQ! We will not be offering the "buy one get one free" entry for Congress/BQ like we offered last year.

Schools have a limited number of entry slots allocated to them, based on their school strength, visible here in the 'Slots' columns.

Rule Clarifications

NSDA Rules will be used and are accessible here.

PF will use the NSDA April topic. LD will use the NSDA March/April topic.

Congress will use a concept of "primary" and "reserve" legislation. There are 4 "primary" bills and 2 "reserve bills." In each of the two sessions, 2 primary bills must be debated and voted on prior to debating a reserve bill. The intent of the reserve bills is to allow the Congress session to continue without repetitive speeches on the primary bills. The Student Congress chamber is not required to open debate on reserve bills; it is available at their discretion.

Schedule

Saturday 3/21

BQ 1 and Congress 1: 9:00AM

BQ 2: 11:00AM

BQ 3 and Congress 2: 12:30PM

BQ 4: 2:30PM

BQ 5: 4:00PM

We will attempt to accelerate the schedule where possible. Congress rounds are required to be at least 10 minutes per student in the session (eg. 16 students = 160 minutes = 2 hours 40 minutes).

Friday 4/10

Debate 1: 4:30PM

Debate 2: 7:00PM

We will attempt to accelerate the schedule where possible (eg. single-flighting if we have sufficient judging).

Saturday 4/11

Speech 1: 8:30AM [Extemp Draw 8:00 AM]

Debate 3: 10:00AM

Speech 2: 11:30AM [Extemp Draw 11:00 AM]

Debate 4: 1:00PM

Speech 3: 2:30PM [Extemp Draw 2:00 PM]

Speech Finals and Debate Elims: 4:15PM

Further Debate Elims: ASAP as needed

We will attempt to accelerate the schedule where possible (eg. single-flighting if we have sufficient judging).