WUDL Travel Team
WUDL’s Travel Team takes students to regional competitions to face the best and brightest from around the region and the nation. These trips are designed to allow students who have worked hard and excelled at the local level to test their skills against students from outside the Washington Metro area and explore the wide world of debate. These tournaments are also an opportunity for students to meet and showcase their skills for college debate coaches and learn about scholarship opportunities.
To attend travel tournaments, WUDL debaters must attend extra practices and do extra research to prepare for these rigorous tournaments. We practice and travel as a single team so WUDL’s Travel Team is a great way to get to know students from around the league. As with all WUDL programs, the Travel Team is 100% free!
Click here to learn more about the WUDL Travel Team
Click here to learn more about how we choose participants
Travel Schedule
The WUDL travel schedule fluctuates from year to year, but we generally attend most of the these competitions each season.
Georgetown Day School Invitational
Washington D.C.
September
Urban Debate Dragon Invitational
Washington, D.C.
November
New York Fall Faceoff
Mamaroneck, New York
December
Lexington Winter Invitational
Lexington, Massachusetts
January
Pennsbury Falcon Invitational
Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
February
Urban Debate National Championship
Moves around the country!
Tournament of Champions
Lexington, Kentucky
Urban Debate Middle School Nationals
Virtual
Newark Invitational
Newark, New Jersey
January
Bishop Guilford Invitational
Birmingham, Alabama
January
Bulldog Invitational
Athens, Georgia
January
Westchester Invitational
Westchester, New York
March
External Summer Camp Opportunities
The Matthew Harris-Ornstein Summer Debate Institute is one of the largest and most pedagogically sound summer debate programs in the country, recruiting highly accomplished instructors from around the nation to teach our advanced labs. The labs are also taught in the context in which our students will be competing, and the most successful debaters in league history haven’t attended external programs. Beyond the trophies, local summer programs are an essential opportunity for team bonding and community building.
All of that being said, there are sometimes benefits to attending external summer debate programs. Some of these are high quality institutions run by real adults who think about student safety and teaching methods, while others are fly by night operations that don’t prioritize either of these elements, besides being very expensive, and not worth the cost.
We have an overview of the main summer programs that we have enough data on to form an opinion on, but these are always up for adjustment based on leadership changes and current faculty.
There are also two exciting summer programs available for students, for free, that we will nominate students for. If chosen, students and their families will need to sign a commitment form to agree to go, and not waste the spot that could have gone to another student. At the moment, we won’t nominate a student for more than one of these programs in their careers.
Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshops
University of Kentucky Urban Debate Fellows Program
Applications will open in February each year, check back later for more information
Competitive Candidates will:
- Apply as a partnership
- Be rising Sophomores, Juniors, or Seniors
- Have been active the previous year at WUDL events
- Have had some competitive success locally at the JV or Varsity level
- Agree to go to a number of travel tournaments the following year