Cal High Mock Trial Places Sixth in State

The verdict is in: The mock trial team won sixth place in the California Mock Trial Championship last weekend in Riverside, topping off the team’s most successful year in more than a decade.

But that success did not come easily.

Six months of preparation led up to last weekend’s state finals, in which more than 34 teams from around the state competed.

In the Contra Costa County Mock Trial Competition, teams never have more than one trial in a day, and there is always at least one day of rest between trials.

In the state finals, our team competed in four trials in less than 48 hours against the top-ranked teams in California.

Going into the competition, we were determined to do well despite the challenges we knew were ahead. But spending 13 straight hours in a hot, stuffy courthouse on Saturday to do three trials back to back with limited breaks made me momentarily reconsider my dedication to the team.

Granted, performing in a mock trial doesn’t require extreme physical exertion or athletic prowess.

But heatedly arguing objections, delivering opening and closing statements, testifying on the stand, and scrambling to improvise leaves participants and emotionally-involved spectators (namely parents) mentally and physically exhausted.

Despite the gauntlet of Saturday, our team won all three trials that day. Our only loss while in Riverside, our only loss the entire year, came Friday night in the first trial of the state finals as the result of a judge’s choice on a tiebreaker. Needless to say, it was a close call.

Such an amazing performance in the state finals, a competition that Cal High mock trial had not been to since 1996, was possible only because of the countless hours spent practicing and the support of our coaches — Cal High teacher Brian Barr, and attorneys Ellen Rosenbluth and Catherine Woodward.

The two previous years, the Cal High team placed third in the county, coming up painfully short of a championship and a bid to the state competition. But this year, team members were committed to placing first at the county level.

When we achieved that goal in early March, we raised the bar, hoping to win state and move on to nationals. Though La Reina High School of Ventura County earned that honor, we are immensely proud of earning sixth in California.

All the grueling practice trials, the weeks spent perfecting objections and case law, the hours spent sweating in a full suit in front of an invariably grumpy man wearing a robe —finally paid off.

Our team was made up of 19 students from the Cal High mock trial class who played the roles of witnesses, attorneys, the bailiff and the clerk. 

There was a prosecution side and a defense side, only one of which would perform in each trial.

At the county and state competitions, organized by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, we tried the fictitious case of People v. Woodson, in which the defendant was charged with committing assault and violating an anti-bullying statute.

This year was my second and final season on the team, and it has been a fitting finish for me. I have served as a defense attorney both years, defending a person accused of murderer last year and a person charged with being a violent bully this year. It’s been my job to create reasonable doubt in every trial.

But I can now say for certain, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the Cal High mock trial team has proved itself to be guilty of greatness.

We’ll gladly face our sentence.