NEDA competitions are divided into three formats: Crossfire, Traditional, and Rapid Fire.

Rapid Fire Division rules/expectations

‘Rapidfire’ is NEDA’s unique extemporaneous debating competition!

Rapidfire is debated by individual competitors, with sides and topics announced at the start of each round.  Topics are selected by the director of each individual tournament, and cover a wide variety of fields and issues.

The debate is to be treated as a pre-policy debate like Crossfire.  There are no policy requirements even if the resolution is phrased as a policy resolution.  All debates should focus on if the resolution is true or false and should be judged using that same standard.

Debaters may quote research to support their claims or use common knowledge/reasoning to support their claims.  Quoted material should not carry more weight than in an argument using common knowledge/reasoning just because it is quoted.

Because all topic research is done individually and immediately before each round, it is possible for debaters from the same school to debate against each other in a Rapidfire round.

The debate should begin 20:00 after the debaters receive the topic.

Rapidfire Format:

• Affirmative Constructive – 4 minutes
• Negative Constructive – 4 minutes
  • First Crossfire – 3 minutes
• Affirmative Rebuttal – 4 minutes
• Negative Rebuttal – 4 minutes
  • Second Crossfire – 3 minutes
• Affirmative Closing – 1 minute
• Negative Closing – 1 minute

Crossfire Format:

• First Affirmative Speaker (1A) – 4 minutes
• First Negative Speaker (1N) – 4 minutes
  • First Crossfire (1A & 1N) – 3 minutes
• Second Affirmative Speaker (2A) – 4 minutes
• Second Negative Speaker (2N) – 4 minutes
  • Second Crossfire (2A & 2N) – 3 minutes
• Affirmative Summary (1A) – 2 minutes
• Negative Summary (1N) – 2 minutes
  • Grand Crossfire (ALL) – 3 minutes
• Affirmative Final Focus (2A) – 1 minute
• Negative Final Focus (2N) – 1 minute

Crossfire_Debate_Format (handout version)

Traditional Format:

• First Affirmative Constructive (1A) – 8 minutes
  • Cross-examination (2N) – 3 minutes
• First Negative Constructive (1N) – 8 minutes
  • Cross-examination (1A) – 3 minutes
• Second Affirmative Constructive (2A) – 8 minutes
  • Cross-examination (1N) – 3 minutes
• Second Negative Constructive (2N) – 8 minutes
  • Cross-examination (2N) – 3 minutes
• Negative Rebuttal (1N) – 5 minutes
• Affirmative Rebuttal (1A) – 5 minutes
• Negative Rebuttal (2N) – 5 minutes
• Negative Rebuttal (2A) – 5 minutes