We are so excited to share the award winners for our season-long awards, recognizing excellence, hard work, and growth across the entire season: 

WUDL Sweepstakes Cup: BASIS DC

High School Team of the Year: Banneker High School

Middle School Team of the Year: Stuart Hobson

This competition came down to the wire, with Stuart Hobson and BASIS DC tying for the Sweepstakes Lead, and only narrowly edging Stuart Hobson out the tiebreaker. Banneker scored more points at Districts than BASIS or Stuart Hobson, but was too far behind coming in to fully make up the gap. None of these teams have any core contributors ready to graduate, and we expect this titanic clash to continue for the foreseeable future. 

Keoni Scott-Reid High School Debater of the Year: Haven Howard, Phelps High School

This award, named for Keoni Scott-Reid, WUDL’s “first” debater and past winner, recognizes the high school debater who was competitively successful, a leader in the community, and grew substantially during the season. Haven exemplifies Keoni’s quiet charm and innovative spirit. He came into the year expecting to be one of the leading Travel Team members this year, and a favorite for nationals after representing the WUDL at JV Nationals last year, but his partner transferred schools in September, leaving him to recruit and train a new partner. Despite this large setback, he thrived. He collaborates easily with other teams, and has set the tone for the league’s advanced debaters, many of whom are too young to remember pre-pandemic travel. We look forward to seeing his senior year has in store. 

Middle School Debater of the Year: Noah Millhouse, Kettering Middle School

Noah participated remotely all of last year without a team. This year, he was concerned that nobody from his school would want to do debate. Despite his initial fears, he advocated for the creation of a team, and to his pleasant surprise, the school has had more students than they know what to do with, with 100 students at the interest meeting. Noah has been a leader on the new squad, and made a solid run at qualifying for nationals. We look forward to what he does next in 8th grade. 

New Debater of the Year: Winnie Chan, Banneker High School

Dr. Arndt called me in early November, and said that she had another team she wanted to enter into the Dragon Invitational, our regional tournament. I wasn’t sure who she was talking about, but she essentially told me, “trust me, they’re good.” 

While that tournament wasn’t quite a rousing success for Winnie and partner Bridget Flores, they learned a lot and hungrily dove into the deep end. They went to a number of regional tournaments, culminating in a Semi-Finals finish at the Pennsbury Falcon Invitational. Facing the best other first year debaters in the Mid-Atlantic and North East, they were second only to Lexington High School, a generational powerhouse with a daily debate class. 

Marching through the ranks, Winnie has won a lot of awards across the season, been incredibly coachable and intellectually curious. Keep it up! 

New Coach of the Year: Shayla Herron, Kettering Middle School

Shayla was thrown into debate mid-season as a few enthusiastic students successfully advocated for their school to start a team. From a handful of enthusiastic recruits to a wild surge of interest and enthusiasm of over 100 recruits, Coach Herron successfully managed a tenacious and hungry squad, identifying the most dedicated students, encouraging them to succeed, and providing a framework for peer to peer learning. 

Kettering won trophies at every tournament they went to, and were often among the largest squads in attendance. Can’t ask for more than that, especially from a first year coach! 

Coach Of The Year: Zachary Komlo

Coach Komlo is WUDL’s longest tenure coach, starting 7 years ago when WUDL was young and tiny. Coach Komlo has had all sorts of squads over the years, but he’s never won a bunch of Varsity awards before, and he’s never hosted a tournament before. 

A finalist for National Coach of the Year last year, Zach is always one of the first to volunteer for things that help the league as a whole. Coach Komlo is a great team player who inspires his students, has a growing team, and makes us all better. 

We finally got you that home game (originally scheduled for March 2020)! 

WUDL Student Choice Awards: 

These awards are given out by popular acclaim from among our debaters. Any student who has been to a tournament is eligible to vote

High School Debater of the Year: Zahra Dinkins, School Without Walls

Zahra has been a very good debater for a long time, including being the Top Seed and a Semi-Finalist at Middle School Nationals in 2021. After an uneven freshman year, Zahra found her footing with new partner William Neuroth and thrived. They were the best WUDL team at the NY Fall Face-Off, and consistently impressed as a young Varsity debater, earning the respect of peers throughout the season. 

Middle School Debater of the Year: Madison Thorpe, Stuart Hobson

Madison was an up and coming debater who got pulled into the national qualifiers last year when someone needed a partner. This year, she was one of the debaters Coach Plaisted turned to as team leaders, helping younger debaters and leading the team competitively for much of the season. Only a 7th grader, the sky is the limit for this amazing young person. 

High School Team of the Year: School Without Walls

School Without Walls has one of the deepest squad of Varsity debaters of any WUDL team, most of whom have debated for 2+ years in middle school before going to high school. This decorated squad is representing WUDL at the UDNC for the first time, and has no seniors, so they will remain a powerhouse for many seasons to come. Coached by alumni Eric Clarke, the team does a lot of research and innovates, pushing the rest of the league to improve too. They also have started recruiting novices who didn’t debate in middle school, making the squad even deeper and more talented. 

Middle School Team of the Year: Eliot Hine Middle School

One of our newest programs this year, Eliot Hine made quite an impression on their peers. Coach Kristina Crump started from scratch, recruiting a strong squad and helped them advance from Rookie to Novice across the season, moving the entire team, not just a few debaters, up to the new division. While they aren’t quite ready to challenge regular powerhouse Stuart Hobson for the Capital Hill Cup, that day is coming soon! 

Judge’s Choice Award: Mars Delehant, DuVal High School

Every coach and volunteer judge that has been to the majority of the WUDL tournaments this year is eligible to vote for their favorite debater across the entire season. Including sportsmanship, character, personal growth, and competitive excellence. This was a tight vote, with many worthy candidates, but one emerged from the pack. Mars Delehant was a Novice as a junior, and stood out, eventually winning the Financial Literacy program last year against much more experienced competition. This year, Mars has been a leader to their school’s Novices, and hustled to catch up and compete at the Varsity level, despite not going to camp or having much experience. Mars (and partner Favour) wrote one of my favorite  affirmatives on this year’s topic. In their last tournament, Mars decided to get a head start on coaching next year and judged at the District tournament.