Welcome to the home page for the 2025 Sunset Cliffs Classic tournament hosted by Point Loma Nazarene University on Oct 24-26, 2025

Status: Tournament Completed
College

REVISED TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

3:10 -- Topic Draw: IPDA Quarterfinals

4:20 -- Topic Draw: NPDA Semfinals & TPDA Finals

5:50 -- Topic Draw: IPDA Semifinals

7:00 -- AWARDS CEREMONY

ASAP -- Topic Draw: IPDA & NPDA Finals 

NPDA DEBATE MOTIONS

Round 1: The Supreme Court of the United States should have term limits for Justices.
Round 2: The United States Federal Government should adopt a policy to better reflect proportional districts.
Round 3: The United States should formally recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Round 4: The United Nations should admit Taiwan as a full member state.
Quarterfinals: Freedom of Speech should include the right to offend.
Semifinals: 
Finals: 

DEBATE PREPARATION ROOMS

Concordia University – Colt Hall Forum
Grossmont College – Bond Academic 102
Newberry College – Bond Academic 151
Northern Arizona – Bond Academic 155
Palomar College – Bond Academic 156
Point Loma – Starkey B100
Rutgers University – Cooper Music 116
San Diego Mesa – Bond Academic 103
San Diego State – Fermanian 201 (Deck Room)
UC Santa Barbara – Cooper Music 128
UC San Diego – Fermanian BP Great Room

 

Announcement Friday, Oct24 2:45pm

- Senior Extemp and Senior Impromptu will have semi-finals during the Pattern A finals and finals during Pattern B finals.  Extemp draw for finals will start at 6:30pm.

- Novice Extemp will have a festival final during pattern A finals.

- Novice Impromptu will have a festival final during pattern B finals. 

- The following events will have a third prelim in leiu of finals: novice ads, senior ads, senior poetry, novice prose, senior ca, senior drama, senior duo, senior POI. 

Announcement Wednesday evening October 22, 2025

Friends, we are excited to welcome you to campus in a few days, and just want to let you know a few items:

- The FTN system is just allowing drops now, which allows us to take care of details like, judges food, trohies, rooms, and judges, etc. . .   Thanks for understanding.

-  Judges are very tight now, especially on Friday so if you know of someone willing to be hired by Blake Longfellow of HiredJudge.com please let him know.  I believe he is still looking for a few more judges for debate on Saturday and Sunday.  But the tournament itself is not hiring anyone except through HiredJudge.com for legal reasons at the universities instructions, at least for this year.

-  And please remind your IPDA competitors and judges that according to IPDA rules no cell phone timers are allowed, they must be kitchen timers or equivalents.  A hassel I know, but we just ordered a bunch overnight from Amazon, and they arrived today, but be sure you also get batteries.

- Also, we expect nice weather, so bring your sunscreen, hats and walking shoes.

The cafeteria will be open for meals to purchase.  And there are fast food places an easy drive from campus.  Subway is the closest next to Peets coffee.  

Announcements and ballots will be electronically posted.  

Feel free to contact me with questions or concerns after reading the invitation on the splash page of forensicstournament.net. 

Registration will take place in Cabrillo Hall 101 on Friday for IE and LD schools and Saturday for others.  You may pay fees  through FTN.  Please make sure totals are correct. 

Extemp Draw will take place in Starky B, located behind Cabrillo Hall and the Copy/Reprographics Center.

The Awards ceremonies will be in Crill Performance Hall on Friday for IEs and NFA LD, and Sunday night in the same location for other debate events.  PLNU is on Fall Break, so parking should be easy in legal parking spaces.

Thank you for respecting one another and the campus, and cleaning up your areas.

Safe travels friends. 

Dr. Skip Rutledge

SkipRutledge@pointloma.edu

1(619)655-0112

 

 

 

 

Quick Update for the TPDA RR for Sunday October 4th. 

Unfortunately due to the low number of people applying for the TPDA Tournament of Champions Round Robin, we will not be hosting that part of the Sunset Cliffs Classic that was to be help on Friday October 24th.  However your students may still compete in other events on that Friday including IEs and NFA LD.

Additionally we hope that you will try TPDA on Saturday and Sunday unless your students will be competing in NPDA which runs during that same time slot.

 

 

Friends,

We are excited to invite you to attend this year's Sunset Cliffs Classic Speech and Debate Tournament to be held on our beautiful seaside campus of Point Loma Nazarene University, in America's Finest City of San Diego, CA.  My source here is our Convention and Visitors bureau and lots of post cards around town.  :-)

The Sunset Cliffs Classic offers IEs and NFA LD on Friday, October 24th.  On Saturday October 25th and Sunday October 26th we have various other debate formats  like IPDA, TPDA, and NPDA.

And importanly we will be offering a TPDA Round Robin on Friday limited to 10 teams so that we can celebrate some of the top team in the nation, to be selected by competitive bid.  It is designed to be a special experience to celebrate some of the best debaters in the nation and to attract interest from other programs wishing to explore this relatively new event.  We will post that invitation as a document in the margin of this splash page, as well as documents that are designed to help judges know what to expect in the various other competitive events offered at these tournaments.

We attempt to follow the Rules of the various governing National organizations like IPDA, NPDA, AFA and NFA, except where noted in the invitation.  Such exceptions include but are not limited to for avoiding the use of electronic devices in the actual debate rounds, or having prompts for each speaker in impromptu rounds, rather than two prompts per room used by some organizations, . . . 

We also allow group prep in debate preparation, and allow flex time in NPDA debate unlike PSCFA, so please read the invitations closely to avoid any confusion.

Please also let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  We look forward to you submitting ideas for debate resolutions, and importantly for you to submit a bid for a team of two top debaters for the TPDA Round Robin, per the invitation.

 

Dr. Skip Rutledge,

Tournament Director,

 

Follow up note on IPDA Judging commitment.  One version of the invitation says that one judge cn cover two IPDA entries, which assumes we are not double flighting., which we hope not to have to do.  But we suspect that we will have to do so.

If we do have to double flight we will reduce the judging commitment to 1 judge covering 3 IPDA entries and try not to abuse your judges by having them judge every sing round.  I hope that this makes sense.  Sorry for the confusion. I will have to amend the invitation accordingly but wanted to get the word out quickly for your planning purposes.

 

Skip

skiprutledge@pointloma.edu

(619)655-0112