For the second year in a row, the UTC Mock Trial team has qualified for the national championships.
Last year, the team qualified for the championships for the first time.
From left to right, coach Mike Giglio, Madison Bennett, Manuel Cruz, Zeke Starr, Peter Zeglen, Yonishka Voorhees, coach Stephanie Fast, Rhiannon Ong-Halleron, Christopher Guin and coach Erika Hyde. Dominique Malone is on the team but couldn’t participate because she came down with pharyngitis the day before; she’ll be with the team at the national championships.
The team is headed to Minneapolis for the American Mock Trial championships on April 20-22. UTC is the only public university in Tennessee to make it to the finals; once in Minneapolis, it will be among 48 teams in the championships.
In the Opening Round Championship Series, which decides who goes to the nationals, UTC beat the University of Alabama, the University of St. Thomas and the University of Central Missouri.
In mock trials, teams are given the particulars of a case—the lawsuit or criminal charges, case law, depositions, witness list, exhibits—a few weeks prior to the competition. Once the trial starts, both teams must finish the entire procedure within three hours. And winning or losing is irrelevant; there’s no verdict. What counts is the judges’ scores.
Teams aren’t just on one side or the other — prosecutor or defense. To prepare, they must work both sides of the aisle, coming up with legal arguments for the plaintiff and the defendant, acting as lawyers for both sides. Team members also play the roles of witnesses and must prepare for those, too.
Team member Zeke Starr won an individual Best Attorney award, the only attorney to do so on both the prosecution and defendant sides of the case.
To make things even more difficult, one of UTC’s team members fell ill, which meant the other eight had to scramble to reassign roles and get themselves up to speed on their new assignments before the competitions.
