NFL District Tournament
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NFL District Tournaments are held each year by the National Forensic League to determine the qualifiers to the National Speech and Debate Tournament in speech, debate, and Student Congress. Each district tournament is hosted by an NFL district, which is made up of a set of schools in a given geographic region.
In debate events (Policy and LD), qualifiers are determined by a double-elimination tournament which runs until the number of debaters left in the tournament is the same as the number of qualifing slots.
In speaking events (the various flavors of extemp and interp), several power-protected preliminary rounds are followed by semifinal and final rounds. The total scores over the course of the tournament (including the semifinal and final rounds, which have more judges than the earlier rounds) determine the national qualifiers from the final round. "Power-protected" means that the competitors in each round (after the first, which is paired randomly) are selected such that a gradient of low-scoring and high-scoring students are included in each round (in other words, the top competitors at any point in the tournament are "protected" from competing against one another).
In Student Congress, the district tournament is often held separately from the speech and debate competitions. (In Eastern Ohio, for instance, it is held a month later.) In congress, a panel of judges votes on the national qualifiers, and one Representative from each House and the two top Senators in the Senate qualify to Nationals.