The McGill Debating Union had its most successful performance on the national stage in years, winning the 2010 Canadian National Debating Championships in Edmonton just over a week ago.

Half of the quarterfinalists, three-quarters of the semifinalists, and both of the finalists were McGill teams. Additionally, six McGill debaters were among the top 10 speakers at the tournament, including Sean Stefanik, who was named top speaker.

“It was the best McGill’s done in as long as anyone can remember,” said Stefanik, a U2 political science student who is also the incoming president of the McGill Debating Union. “Four out of the top eight teams in the tournament were from McGill, where no other school had more than one in the elimination round.”

McGill Debating Union President Sophie MacIntyre, U3 economics and biology, and Vinay Kumar Mysore, U3 philosophy and psychology, won the national championship, defeating the team of Stefanik and Saro Setrakian in the all-McGill final. It was the first time a McGill team won the championship since the 1998-99 season.

“It was a great experience, it was very nice to do really well,” said Mysore, who is also the president of the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate. “And it was really great because we had a number of different people from the club do really well, and the tournament itself was a lot of fun.”

The University of Alberta Debate Society hosted the tourament, which featured over 250 participants from more than 20 Canadian universities.

Six two-person teams represented McGill, which was most likely twice as many as there would have been had the union not received financial help from the Students’ Society through the new Ambassador Fund.

“It’s always a struggle to get funding to send teams to tournaments, especially when they’re out of province and you have to pay for flights,” Stefanik said. “This year, we were fortunate enough to get money from the SSMU Ambassador Fund, which we’re very grateful for. So that made it possible to send six teams as opposed to three, which is what we usually do.”

Along with the additional funding, Stefanik cited the strong focus on development as one of the main factors in McGill’s success this year.

“We’ve invested a lot of time into training, particularly with people who come and join the club in their first year,” he said. “That’s something we started last year, and it’s starting to pay off already.”

MacIntyre also saw this as a big reason for McGill’s success at nationals.

“I think we’re known on the university circuit for putting a lot of emphasis on development and training,” she said. “We tend to be a club that relies on having really smart undergrads coming in instead of relying a lot on graduate students and we gear our training program toward that. That sort of strength on recruitment and development is how we keep our club strong, given that we don’t have a lot of grad students who have already been on the circuit for a while coming in.”

With the team’s success this year, Stefanik is optimistic for next year because of the depth of the club and its strength in recruitment and development.

“We’re fortunate enough that out of the eight McGill debaters that made the elimination round, five of them will still be here next year, so we have a great group to start off with,” he said. “We have a huge and dedicated group of enthusiastic individuals, which is by far the most important thing. When you have people who are committed, success usually follows pretty quickly thereafter.”