WUDL Teams Make History at Urban Debate National Championship

“Shoot! Let me throw my laundry in right now cause its looking like I won’t have time on Sunday!” — WUDL Program Associate Danielle Dupree with a lot of foresight after the first day of the UDNC

This past weekend, the Washington Urban Debate League joined more than 20 other leagues from around the nation participating in the Urban Debate National Championship, or UDNC. This tournament brings together the best competitors that Urban Debate has to offer in one of the most competitive end of season national competitions out there. Beyond the rigorous competition, it brings together a community of excellent students, coaches, and other supporters of Urban Debate that we’ve sorely missed during the pandemic. 

Historically, the tournament has been solely a Varsity competition, with each league able to qualify two teams (3 if you are the host and the bracket needs to be evened out, such as in Washington in 2018, or if the National Urban Debater of the Year doesn’t qualify to represent their league competitively). This year, the tournament also featured a JV division. Given the timing, we decided to choose two strong teams that had competed in JV all year instead of trying to rush a qualifying process, which will be in place starting next year (if NAUDL continues the division).

In Varsity, our qualifiers were Senior Emmanuel Makinde / Sophomore Nathaniel Banjo of Charles Flowers, and Senior Alexander O’Sullivan / Junior Noemie Durand of Basis DC qualified as our representatives. They were joined by Junior Precious Sobowale / Sophomore Dailyn Wray of CMIT North, and Sophomores Haven Howard / Ayotunde Ejiko of Phelps ACE High School.

Competition kicked off Friday, with two teams competing from the Washington Plaza Hotel (with Coach Komlo of Phelps, Coach Carroll of Flowers, and WUDL staff David Trigaux and Dr. Omar Price on hand to support), while the other two teams competed remotely. 

On Saturday, however, we were all able to gather at Basis DC for the first in-person, multi-school competitive experience in two years. In fact, only Senior Emmanuel (his sophomore year), and Sophomores Haven and Ayotunde (middle school) had ever been to an in person tournament, so teaching some teams about how to build yourself a podium and other tricks of debating in a classroom had to be reviewed pre-round. While the teams didn’t end up facing each-other, the in-person experience was a powerful community building opportunity that we look forward to replicating at the 8th annual Matthew Harris Ornstein Summer Debate Institute and beyond.

 

Enough exposition already, how did we do! 

Well…..we had a really great tournament. Before this weekend, the best a WUDL team had ever done was finish as an Octo-Finalist (Jonathan and Ernest, DuVal, 2019), or finish as the 4th seed, but not advance to elimination rounds (Dennis and Alexa, Northwestern, last year’s weird pod system). Our best speaker award was 5th Place, from Liv Birnstad (Capital City, last year). 

This year, all of those records came tumbling down. 

Charles Flowers AND Basis DC both finished as  Varsity Quarter-Finalists. Flowers didn’t even have to debate in Octos as a highly seeded team, while Basis just won their Octo and advanced to Quarter-Finals. Emmanuel was the 5th overall Speaker, while Nathaniel was 8th. 

In JV, CMIT advanced to Quarter-Finals as well after winning their Octo-Final round. While Phelps didn’t advance to elimination rounds, they had a great weekend with some well fought rounds (and a lot of frustration about a lack of disclosure about how they were doing). They also provided valuable intel and support to their league-mates after they were eliminated, returning to observe and support on Sunday despite being eliminated.

 

The entire squad cheers as it is announce that Basis DC will advance to elimination rounds

Important Shout Outs: 

To Coach Yigletu and Basis DC for hosting us both Saturday and Sunday. The ability to be in person provided both a distinctly different community feeling for our students and coaching team, but it also made it a lot easier to properly support our students and their preparations. Many years ago at the Chicago UDNC, I saw our friends from LAMDL make a “war room” to support their students in mine and Cameron’s hotel room. This year, we couldn’t have asked for a better support system. 

To the folks in the “War Room,” Coaches Messai Yigletu (Basis), Darrian Carroll (Flowers), Zach Komlo (Phelps), and Jennifer Matson (CMIT) from our partner schools, and the WUDL Team (Dr. Price, Danielle Dupree, David Trigaux, and McAlister Clabaugh) for their emotional fortitude, pre-round prep, and putting up with my attempts to re-construct the bracket on a whiteboard. 

To the league staff, volunteers, and others who judged at the UDNC. We were on some great panels, and our students got lots of great feedback. This tournament really does have the best culture of any big national competition, all of the rigor with a growth oriented mindset instead of a lot of the toxic hyper-competitiveness. 

To LAMDL for winning the tournament. Emmanuel and Nathaniel had a great round against y’all, very well deserved!