UPDATE:

We will be re-scheduling this event to the 2022-2023 school year, with current thoughts leaning toward the August/September timeframe.  Please stay tuned for more information.  Thank you for your time.

Joe Rankin

VictoryXR Announces World’s First Metaverse VR High School Speech & Debate Tournament

VictoryXR cordially invites you to attend the first VictoryXR Metaverse Challenge on Saturday, March 26th, 2022.  VictoryXR is a world leader in virtual reality and augmented reality digital twin campuses.   Now, we expand these services into the speech and debate community and announce this tournament as a ‘proof-of-concept’ for virtual reality use in this field.

First Place winners will each receive a pair of RayBan Stories sunglasses (https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/discover-ray-ban-stories/) along with a trophy. 

2nd - 6th place will each receive a trophy or medal.

The tournament will be held on the VictoryXR Metaverse Campus: https://youtu.be/AcFaVgvpZk0

Students will need access to a virtual reality headset to compete. Acceptable headsets include Oculus Quest 1 & 2 and Rift, Pico Neo 3, Vive Focus Plus, Vive, the HP Reverb or most Windows 10 VR headsets. 

Steve Grubbs, founder and CEO of VictoryXR, is no stranger to the National Speech and Debate Association.  Steve qualified for the national tournament twice (San Francisco ‘82 & Kansas City ‘83) in Extemporaneous Speaking and Student Congress during his time at Davenport West High School. He also coached at Davenport Assumption and Davenport West for 10 years.  

In 2014, Steve was awarded the Harold Keller Public Service Leadership Award at the NSDA Nationals tournament.  Now, Steve is looking to combine the virtual world with the speech and debate world to explore new frontiers in communication.

“I think most of us learned during the pandemic that the Zoom education doesn't get students the level of immersiveness they need for true learning,” Grubbs said. “Within five to seven years, every college, university in the world will have at one level or another a metaversity.  We are pioneering that and figuring out best practices. What happens in 2022 will in many ways define the future of education.”

With this in mind, VictoryXR would like to invite you to participate in the first virtual reality high school tournament in the world, utilizing the VictoryXR Campus.  We hope you can join us for this groundbreaking event and please see the tabs on the right side of our registration page for additional information.  

Each student may enter one event for this tournament, as we want to ensure the best experience for coaches, judges, and students alike.  We are looking to maximize the number of schools attending, so we are going to limit entries per school to 5 students each initially.  All entries will be waitlisted for confirmation initially, as we ensure all are equally represented.  

This event will be a proof-of-concept to showcase the possibilities of competing in a metaverse world.  With that in mind, we will be offering 4 training sessions leading up to the event – we are requiring each participant/judge to attend a minimum of one of these sessions.  We believe this will ensure all participants/judges are familiar with the technology involved and will lead to a more successful event for all those involved.  Please visit our Tabroom registration site for more information regarding technology requirements and our mandatory training dates/times.  

We hope to see you at our first ever VictoryXR Invitational on Saturday, March 26th, 2022.  We believe this is an incredible opportunity to reach out to students in a new way and hope you will be part of this inaugural event.  If you have any questions, please contact Joe Rankin at the email address listed below.  See you in March!

Sincerely,

Steve Grubbs

CEO

VictoryXR - https://www.victoryxr.com/

Joe Rankin

Speech/Debate Coach

Bettendorf High School

jrankin@bettendorf.k12.ia.us