Unfortunately, there was no time for me to contemplate Kane's sudden presence as the first match of the day began soon after Kane finished his speech. After an intermission of about half an hour, where students were given time to warm up as staff members moved the makeshift stage back to the storage room, the tournament officially started at around 6pm.
There are a total of 64 teams participating in nationals. Unlike regionals, there are no seeded teams. The champion for the regional tournament of each state is allocated a slot for nationals, consisting of 50 different teams. The rest of the slots were allocated towards the teams that got second place in the regionals based on population. The West Coast state and the Southern state were also allocated a third slot to make up for the huge disparities between the population of these two states compared to the others.