Over the four-day weekend (March 13-16), the Bellarmine Model UN team traveled over five hours to JFK Airport, National High School Model United Nations-ready. NHSMUN, having been running for over 50 years, is regarded as the world’s most prestigious, diverse, and largest Model UN conference. With attendees from over 160 schools across 70 countries, and former Vice President Kamala Harris as the conference’s guest speaker, stakes were high. However, BELLARMUN, bringing 20 delegates, was as ready as ever.

The education team, consisting of seniors Hector Ramirez and Liam Krattli, as well as junior Nicole Gobal, had spent the previous month organizing activities and workshops to ensure delegates went into the conference with extensive research and public speaking skills. When asked about his experience as a Co-Chair of the Education department, Ramirez said, “I would say prepping  the delegation for NHSMUN was a lot of hard work, a lot of research into what NHSMUN specifically likes to see in delegates, a lot of scheduling and time management along with my team members, and a lot of open communication.”

The Education Department’s efforts certainly paid off–by the end of the conference, the BELLARMUN delegation walked away with an Award of Merit, and seniors Addie Kelly and Ainsley Joyce won the coveted Best Delegate award. When asked to reflect on the delegation’s performance, Bellarmine Model UN President and senior Carter Milliren responded, “I feel really great that our students were well-prepared to handle the conference [standard of] respect and diplomacy, and could uphold a level of professionalism.”

His sentiments were echoed by advisor Ken Brown, who stated, “What I liked the best was testing our program against some of the countries’ best programs on the East Coast. I was really proud of our students who held their own despite the really aggressive competition. I thought people represented our program really well, and we ended up winning a delegation award which I think was proof of that.”

In an interview, Kelly said, “NHSMUN was really a great experience to practice debate on an international scale….Me and my partner Ainsley both had an amazing time, and we’re honored to debate alongside the rest of our delegation. We were very proud to bring home an award that really shows how strong BELLARMUN is.”

Even delegates who did not bring home an award had an extremely formative experience. Sophomore Garrett Sullivan reflected, “I think NHSMUN was a great experience because being on a global scale and seeing talents all over the world kind of upped the stakes and made it a little more difficult and harder to compete. With that, there was a lot of learning—I definitely improved my speaking ability and took some strategies from others.” 

Despite the competitive environment and heavy emphasis on education, everyone left the trip with a sense of pride and accomplishment. For many seniors, NHSMUN was a perfect concluding conference to their MUN career.

The rest of the BELLARMUN will be ending out the year by attending KINGMUN 2026, a two-day conference on April 18-19 in Bellevue.