Its Spoooky How Sharp These Young People Are!
Goblins and Ghosts, Wookies and Wizards oh my!
The halls were haunted with good ideas, and the young folks channeled debate champions past this past weekend at the Washington Urban Debate League’s 2022 Fall Classic.
This tournament is always one of the most fun events of the year, as students, judges, and tournament administrators alike ran a normal, regular season debate tournament….in costume, with awards for the best and most original costumes (as well as for their debating prowess).
Huge shout out to Kristin Yochum, officer Pablo, and the great folks at EL Haynes High School for allowing us to use their beautiful facilities on short notice. They were great hosts, helping us manage the hiccups of the return to in person debate with patience, creativity, and grace. We hope this will be the first of many great tournaments at EL Haynes.
We were excited to have several new schools attending their first tournament this weekend:
- Brookland Middle School
- Center City Capital Hill
- Friendship Woodridge
- Social Justice
In Varsity, School Without Walls came out swinging, taking 1st, 3rd, and 5th place. Coach Clarke (Columbia Heights, 2019, Georgetown University 2023) has a young team full of decorated middle school debaters, and they’ve officially declared that they’re one of the teams to beat this year (and several years to come).
- While he was decked out as Maverick, Balk had some help from partner Mallia. The Juniors led the way, going undefeated, while Freshman/Sophomore partnership Pessey/Cole took 3rd, and Freshman/Sophomore partnership Neuroth/Dinkins finished 5th. Pessey, Balk, and Dinkins also took home speaker awards.
- BASIS DC’s Mazumdar/Lockwood took 2nd place, (top speaker for Mazumdar, 3rd speaker for Lockwood) while Capital City’s Villaflor/Stevens finished 4th overall.
In Junior Varsity, the competition was fierce. 5 different schools took the top 5 spots, and 8 different schools were represented in the top 10.
- Debating alone, Oyster Adam’s Goldblatt went undefeated. Goldblatt, also the 4th speaker, has represented WUDL at Middle School Nationals the last two years, including advancing to elimination rounds in 2020.
- 7th graders from Stuart Hobson, Webster and McNamara, who won the 8th Annual Matthew Harris Ornstein Summer Debate Institute Tournament and were alternates for Middle School Nationals as 6th graders, took 2nd place in JV for the 2nd tournament in a row.
- High Schoolers from Douglass (1st year debater Evans and 2022 New Debater of the Year Adejumo), DuVal (Seniors Gam and Delehant, who won WUDL’s Financial Literacy Debates this spring), and Banneker ( 1st year debaters Chan and Flores)
- In 8th, McKinley Tech’s Ejiko and Esaw also took home trophies. This team was started by captain Ejiko less than a month ago, and is still working out their coaching situation, but it hasn’t gotten in the way of their competitive success.
In Novice, some of our larger teams flexed their muscle. Stuart Hobson won 2nd, 7th, and 9th (Winston/Morrissey, Pinson/Sullivan, and Ozturk/Levett, respectively), while Banneker won 3rd and 4th (Hillson/Sellers, and Ebiringa/Smith), and Montgomery Village took home 6th and 8th (Habone/Gangaram and Pishva/Yombo). DuVal grabbed 5th place (Gyamerah/Adiraju), and CMIT 10th place (Green/Galley), while BASIS DC’s Choi and Chen won the division. We are impressed with the Hobson kiddos especially — all three of their award winning teams had moved up from Rookie in the last two weeks. We expect a number of these folks will wander into JV by Christmas.
In Rookie, the competition was fierce, with four teams from four different schools going undefeated in the top 4 spots. Montgomery Village (Wisdom / Solomon) took home 1st place, while College Park took 2nd place (Howarth and Yoblin). In 3rd and 4th place, intrepid mavericks grabbed some hardware, Belay from EL Haynes, and Blanc from Hardy, respectively. After that, a legion of Stuart Hobson debaters collected the rest of the trophies, with Capital City’s Ramos and Chamberlin-King keeping them honest in 9th place. We wanted to give a special shout out to Center City Trinidad’s Ball for winning a speaker award as well.
We are so proud of all of our students who debated this weekend. Only 8 students had debated in person before this fall 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 hits its stride at the Urban Debate Dragon Invitational Nov. 11th – 13th, tentatively at Eastern High School!
In Rookie, the competition was fierce, with four teams from four different schools going undefeated in the top 4 spots. Montgomery Village (Wisdom / Solomon) took home 1st place, while College Park took 2nd place (Howarth and Yoblin). In 3rd and 4th place, intrepid mavericks grabbed some hardware, Belay from EL Haynes, and Blanc from Hardy, respectively. After that, a legion of Stuart Hobson debaters collected the rest of the trophies, with Capital City’s Ramos and Chamberlin-King keeping them honest in 9th place. We wanted to give a special shout out to Center City Trinidad’s Ball for winning a speaker award as well.
We are so proud of all of our students who debated this weekend. Only 8 students had debated in person before this fall 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 hits its stride at the Urban Debate Dragon Invitational Nov. 11th – 13th, tentatively at Eastern High School!
“You all make quite a team. Ups and downs. COVID. Pretzels. Costumes, etc. You all put on quite a show. Even when its tough, you all take the “show must go on” to a whole level. Its noticed and appreciated. Always proud to spend a Saturday with you and remember why we are doing this for the kids.”
— Jess Berenson, Independent Program Coach
