The Mock Trial team competed at the regional tournament and is now moving onto the state competition having won both trials at regionals.
Tom Kelley, a professional attorney working with the Mock Trial team to help in preparation, explained how mock trial works.
“What happens is they get a problem, a trial problem. It’s a simulated problem. It’s a created problem. Then they play the roles that all the people in the courtroom would play. You have people who play the role of attorneys and you have people who play the role of witnesses and you have people who play the role of a bailiff,” Kelley said.
In order to have the case as realistic as possible, the state competition takes place in a courtroom setting by having real judges and attorneys volunteer to judge the students.
“These will be held in courtrooms, and there will usually be attorneys and magistrates from the court and attorneys who practice law in Akron, who will act as judges and judge that trial,” Kelley said.
Alan Silvidi, the adviser for Mock Trial and an English teacher at Revere, discussed when and where the competition will take place.
“The state tournament [is] always in Columbus at the Franklin County Courthouse… March 6-8,” Silvidi said.
Saumya Mahajan, a student who has been participating in Mock Trial all throughout high school, explained how the team is split up.
“There’s two sides to the team. There’s the plaintiff side and the defense side… For each side we have 2 witnesses and 2 lawyers,” Mahajan said.
Max Braun, a junior doing his first year in mock trial, explained how the team will prepare for regionals and how it will be different when compared to preparation for districts.
“I think just working on the finer details because we have our main case laid out now, so it is getting our eye contact with the judge, or speaking just that bit louder, that kind of thing we need to work on,” Braun said.
The team also uses their past competition experience at districts and regionals to build a better case and to improve themselves.
“When we go to the mock trial competition, we do get some score sheets back from the judges, so we’ve definitely been using that input to change a little bit about what we’re focusing on with our argument, details of our delivery, how fast we’re talking, how expressive we are, and those details that really refine what we’re gonna say,” Mahajan said.
As time goes on, the team keeps on practicing even more, while other schools may have already done all the practice they can.
“The longer we go on, the better our chances are because we don’t really force ourselves to have everything done, like a lot of these teams do, and so then the longer we go on, the more we have done compared to those other teams… The idea is that they have kind of already reached their peak,” Braun said.
As the Revere Minutemen move onto the state competition, their efforts towards winning will be written on the results they recieve.
