Joining WACFL

All public and private schools in the Washington DC metropolitan area are invited to join our league! The WACFL geographic boundaries are defined by the Archdiocese of Washington, which encompasses the District of Columbia and southern Maryland and the Diocese of Arlington, which encompasses Northern Virginia.

Students in grades 7 - 12 are eligible to compete for their member schools. Junior high schools can compete either independently or as members of the high school they would normally feed into. Students in grades 7 and 8 can compete in the preliminary and MetroFinal tournaments, but they cannot compete at NCFL Nationals.

WACFL administers tournaments in seven different speech and four different debate formats. Preliminary tournaments are held monthly from October through February. Schools can attend as many or as few tournaments as they wish. Please visit our competition event pages to learn more about the different formats offered.

WACFL requires that teams have a school-authorized adult on-site for the entirety of each tournament. Usually this is the team coach, but schools can authorize additional people to be the on-site representative. These designated adults are there to address any emergencies that may arise with your team, such as an illness or accident. Designated on-site adults should have appropriate emergency contact information for their students and school administration.

Schools must also supply trained adult judges for each tournament, proportional to the number of student entries. WACFL holds two in-person coaches meetings each year in May and September.

Entry level membership dues are offered to schools that are joining for the first time or rejoining after an extended absence. For subsequent years, dues are scaled based on the number of student entries for the previous year. These dues are used to cover building use and hosting costs for the monthly tournaments. In addition, the dues are used to purchase medals and trophies for the students and schools.

Please email president@wacfl.org if you are interested in joining WACFL or have questions about our league.