January 18th, 2025 | Highland Park High School

ICDA's fifth tournament of the year, and first tournament of the new calendar year, is a non-standard invitational tournament.

Unlike previous tournaments, which have both junior varsity and varsity chambers, all the chambers at ICDA 5 are varsity chambers. Consequently, junior varsity debaters who want to compete at ICDA 5 have to compete in varsity chambers.

ICDA 5 is also an approved Tournament of Champions (TOC) bid tournament. A select number of varsity debaters who have earned enough nominations over the course of the previous four tournaments will be allowed to compete a special subset of TOC preliminary chambers for the chance to qualify at the official TOC championship held at the University of Kentucky each April.

TOC debaters compete in a fairly standard chamber, with only two main changes:

Firstly, the day of the tournament, three bills (one from each category) are randomly selected to be used in the final round. Debaters in the preliminary chambers are only allowed to debate the six remaining bills.

Secondly, in addition to the usual 0-6 scores they receive for each speech, debaters will also be ranked 1-8 (or 9 if they are not in the top 8) by each judge. The six debaters who, at the end of the two preliminary rounds, have the best cumulative rankings in their chamber will compete in the TOC final round during third session. The top six debaters from this round will qualify for the TOC in April.