Alex Wycoff
Staff Writer
Mira Costa’s Model United Nations delegates attended a conference in San Francisco last weekend where they received second place overall, and other members traveled to Montreal in early November where they won the Outstanding Large Delegation award over various schools from the United States and Canada.
“It [San Francisco] was a very competitive conference because several of our top rivals went too, so it was a good test,” MUN advisor Wayne Knutson said. “It was an extremely solid conference.”
Forty Mira Costa delegates traveled to participate in the Regional High School Model United Nations conference in San Francisco. The conference marked the first time a Mira Costa MUN delegation traveled to San Francisco for a debate.
“RHSMUN is something everyone looked forward to,” junior Rafeed Kahn said. “All the practice we had this year led up to it.”
Other schools that participated in the Regional Conference included Edison, Cerritos and Huntington high schools.
“This conference is run by the same people who run the national high school conference,” MUN advisor Bob Timberlake said. “So we expected this one to be high quality, very competitive.”
In San Francisco, Mira Costa’s delegates won an “Outstanding,” which is considered a second-place position, behind students from Huntington Beach High School who placed first.
In Montreal, Costa delegates competed with over a dozen other schools and won 18 awards.
“We were voted the outstanding large delegation [in Montreal], which is the best,” Knutson said. “We were awarded a blue helmet.”
Costa’s delegates represented France in committees at Montreal more than any other nation, though they also had other countries debating a variety of topics.
“There were 30 different topics at the conference,” Knutson said. “Also, there were about nine or 10 different committees in Montreal.”
Of the roughly 40 students that traveled to Montreal for this conference, 11 delegates won gavels and seven delegates won honorable mention.
“Costa’s win [at Montreal] was a reflection on how well-researched [we were] and how well we worked together as a team,” sophomore Montreal delegate Remi Rothchilde said.
This is Costa’s fourth trip to Montreal and its third consecutive victory there. This year’s Montreal delegation had 16 sophomores, an unusually high number for a conference generally dominated by upperclassmen, according to Timberlake.
“It was quite an impressive result considering how young of a team we had,” Timberlake said.
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