**We’ll have separate posts to celebrate the excellent work of folks at the Adam J. Rubinson Invitational at Deloitte and the Adam J Rubinson Memorial Award**

This is the first time we’ve had a single school sweep the qualifying process for nationals — and it happened in both middle and high school! 

We’re very happy to have these four teams join BASIS DC and School Without Walls as our representatives to culminative, End of Year Tournaments.

Representing the WUDL at the Urban Debate National Championship: 

James Neuroth and Evelyn Webster (Stuart Hobson)

Evelyn and Anna (below) represented the WUDL at Middle School Nationals last year. We thought James and Madison would also qualify last year, but they had a rough second half of the qualifying process, getting a little too creative and making arguments they couldn’t quite execute yet. This year, they have grow tremendously, coming into camp hungry and doing a bunch of great research this season. They are the most experienced middle school debaters we have, having gone to multiple travel tournaments, and won awards in JV at regionals this year.  

Anna Sullivan and Madison Thorpe (Stuart Hobson)

Anna and Madison are also very experienced students with extensive records of competitive success. Madison was our Middle School Debater of the Year last year. Madison has been to several regional competitions, and Anna (with Evelyn, above) were semi-finalists last year.  They have, along with James and Evelyn, been competing in Varsity at local tournaments since Sept.

Marco Pinson and Max Filliung-Reinard (Stuart Hobson)

The least experienced partnership here, Marco and Max have debated with a lot of different people over the last two years, and especially Marco often debated alone. They’ve figured out working together, and it showed as they broke out to a 6-0 record at the beginning of the qualifying process, holding the top seed for much of the competition.  

Sadie Smith and Marshall Thorpe (Stuart Hobson) 

Sadie and Marshall (Madison’s younger brother), have been to a single regional competition, going to Pennsbury earlier this month. Sadie was the top Novice Speaker, and the pair advanced to elimination rounds at the competition. Together with Marco and Max, they’ve been competing (and winning a lot recently) in JV at regional competitions. 

Special shouts: 

Coach Kip Plaisted and Coach Jon Alfuth — they’ve qualified students to Middle School Nationals four years in a row (and two of their former students are qualified at the high school level too)

We have two more spots to represent the league at the UDL Middle School National Tournament — applications are open now, and close March 7th. We’ll announce the winners March 9th.