You are cordially invited to attend the Washburn Rural Invitational, which will be hosted here in Topeka from September 15-17, 2023. We are offering three divisions of competition in policy debate: varsity, open and novice. The round schedule will be posted in a separate tab, but will include three days of competition in varsity, two days (15th and 16th) in the open division, and one day (16th) in novice.

We are proud to announce that we have been designated as a semifinals bid for the Tournament of Champions in policy debate. We will be abiding by the novice packet offered by the NDCA, with some additional modifications for competition in Kansas. All information on the novice packet are included in a separate tab. If competitors read arguments from outside of the packet, they will be assigned a loss in that debate. If you do not want case limitations, but also don't want collegiate style debates, just put your entries in the open division.

Travel notification: The Kansas High School Activities Association has a 500 mile limitation, including travel into Kansas for competition. It also requires approval for all out of state entries. If you are planning to attend from out of state, please enter as early as possible so we can process your paperwork.

Judging: The varsity division will require 3 rounds of judging for each entry that your school is granted. If you need help acquiring judges, you can hire them from the tournament for 30 dollars per round. The open division is more traditional and will include largely local volunteers and alumni. The novice division will be a mixture of local judges as well as more experienced volunteers and alumni.

Food: This year, we will be offering several meals at the school, however we are not including any of them in entry fees. On Friday, we will be providing pizza for dinner, ordered through tabroom. All pizza orders will be 5 dollars for 2 slices and a bottle of water. On Saturday for lunch, we are partnering with our local community to offer food trucks outside of the cafeteria. A portion of all proceeds will go to the Auburn Washburn National Education Association to fund student scholarships for college bound individuals who need financial assistance. The food trucks are new to our tournament this year, but we want to use them in order to offer this scholarship opportunity through our local institution, so please support us! Food truck orders will not occur through tabroom, and will be paid to food truck vendors directly. Saturday for dinner, we will be offering boxed lunches from Jason's Deli. I would not suggest ordering dinner if you only have entries in the open/novice division, because you will likely be done with the tournament before dinner time on Saturday. However, if you want orders for your team on Saturday night, we will be offering that option through tabroom. Debaters remaining on Sunday will have bagels provided for breakfast on Sunday morning, free of charge.