Mock Trial lays down the law at State
On April 1, the Mock Trial team boarded a bus headed for Kansas City to participate in the annual State competition, following a second place finish at Regionals. The team finished seventh out of 16 participants.
“At State, we learned a lot and went up against really good competition,” Logan Dorsey, junior, said. “In the end, it went really well.”
Initially, the preliminary round contained more than 40 teams throughout St. Louis. Twelve teams advanced to the regional rounds, and eight of the top regional teams moved onto the State competition, MHS being one of them.
The competition this season revolved around a civil case featuring a student who left school after being cyberbullied and whether the school addressed the issue appropriately.
“It’s not as interesting as a criminal case,” Dorsey said. “But it was really cool because we’re exposed to a lot of potential modern-day bullying situations.”
Sponsor Thomas Puetz, math teacher, said he learned about law through coaching Mock Trial.
“It’s really impressive how realistic the trials seem,” Puetz said. “I’ve learned a lot about law just going to these Mock Trial competitions.”
This year’s success came as a surprise to most of its team members.
“Initially we didn’t think we were going to make it very far in the season,” senior Emma Censky, president, said. “But, we worked very hard together as a team and we ended up doing very well against some really difficult school.”
Compared to most private schools, Censky said MHS was at a disadvantage for not having a lawyer as their coach.
“We see ourselves as the underdog school because a lot of the schools that we’re going against are private schools and have parents that are lawyers,” Censky said. “Having a math teacher as a sponsor, we really taught ourselves about the different policies of law and ended up beating the teams that had lawyers and did just as good as they did.”
The successful season left many good memories for those involved.
“[At Regionals] we were all holding hands and when they called our name out as second place we all just screamed and my vice president Jenica started crying, it was probably my favorite moment of high school honestly,” Censky said.
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