WUDL’s First In Person Tournament in 30 Months A Great Success

WUDL Hosts 1st In Person Tournament in 30 Months!

In March 2020, we were putting the finishing touches on the plans to host our District Tournament at Phelps High School and Hugh Browne Education Campus. A week before, stay at home orders were issued across the nation as rising cases sent us scurrying for safety.

Three national tournaments, twenty two digital tournaments, and more than 1000 debaters later, we’re back!

During the pandemic, Stuart Hobson emerged as a competitive force, winning Middle School Nationals in 2021, finishing in the semi-finals in 2022, and growing to serve more than 50 debaters every year. It is exceedingly fitting that they were our hosts for our first tournament after the pandemic has become more endemic.

Huge shout out to Coach Plaisted for being a great host, helping us manage the hiccups of in person debate with patience, creativity, and grace.

This season, we’re on pace to almost double the number of schools we’re serving. From 40 partner schools last year, we’re looking at more than 65 this year, a 70% increase!

Some of these new programs made their debut already this year, including:

Center City Trinidad
Coolidge High School
DC Prep Edgewood
Dunbar High School
Girls Global Academy
McKinley Tech

In Varsity, Capital City’s Birnstad and Villaflor went undefeated and made a statement — we’re one of the teams to beat this year. Banneker’s McCauley and Primus were right behind them, finishing as the top two individual speakers in the tournament. McCauley got perfect scores in each of her rounds, something we don’t remember ever happening before. BASIS, E. Roosevelt, and Walls were right behind them. We’re in for a very competitive season of friendly rivalry in the Varsity division that will push everyone to be better.

In Junior Varsity, we saw one of our new teams debut. McKinley Tech has eluded our efforts to start a program for years, until former Phelps captain Ayotunde Ejiko transferred schools and started recruiting. McKinley’s Junior and Esaw finished 6th overall in their debut, a great start to the program. The trophy winners in JV were a mix between experienced debaters working with less experienced partners, and promising middle school debaters:

1st Place: Douglass’s Adejumo, the 2022 New Debater of the Year, with a brand new partner, Jordan Evans, and 3rd Place: Charles Flower’s Banjo, a 2022 National Quarter-Finalist, with a very inexperienced partner, Esther Binigbolo
2nd Place: 7th graders from Stuart Hobson, Webster and McNamara, who won the 8th Annual Matthew Harris Ornstein Summer Debate Institute Tournament and 4th Place: BASIS DC 8th graders Boehm and Greaves — who also placed highly at summer camp

In Novice, Stuart Hobson’s Neuroth and Thorpe defended their home turf, going undefeated. They were followed by BASIS DC’s Choi/Chen, Banneker’s Flores/Chan and Ginyard-Fraguada/Smith, and CMIT North’s Ortiz/Ruiz. Despite only debating two of their rounds, Girls Global’s Lindsey/Jones still earned a trophy.

In Rookie, Stuart Hobson, Montgomery Village, Oyster Adams, Hardy, BASIS, and EL Haynes took home most of the trophies. Center City Trinidad’s Ball and McSwain won their school’s first team award in 12th place, while Center City Trinidad’s Cade won 3rd place Speaker.

We are so proud of all of our students who debated this weekend. Only 8 students had debated in person before at a regular season tournament, and most of our judges were also having to re-learn how to do in-person competition. We are excited to see hundreds more debaters make their debut this season as the competitive season warms up at Halloween!

Our sentiments couldn’t be better summed up by this quote from one of our new coaches:

“Thank you so much….for putting together such a great tournament! All of the kids had such a great time. I’m so proud of all the debaters for their hard work this weekend” — Coach Rubin, DC Prep