Not all mock trial teams are accepted to go to the World championships in New York; however, Faith Lutheran High School has been accepted to compete in the championship due to their consistent success at the state or national level.

The Faith Lutheran mock trial team will be traveling to New York on October 24 to compete against other mock trial teams from all over the world. According to empiremocktrial.org, Empire Mock Trial can be described as a competition where students are given a criminal case from the American Mock Trial Association in which they develop a legal theory, choose and call witnesses to the stand to support their theory, and craft and clear direct and cross examinations and draft persuasive opening and closing arguments.

The students and advisors have been working extremely hard on their case, as they strive to win this year at the championship. Ms. Uy, director of the mock trial team says that the teams have been practicing for two to three days a week for three to five hours and some Saturdays for three to six hours. “There is always room for improvement, we work until we compete. On the Thursday we arrive we’ll scrimmage four times against nationally ranked teams to get ready for the actual competition.”

The trial this year focuses on a man who went scuba diving and told the company that he didn’t know what he was doing, however, the company told him he was fine, and due to his lack of knowledge on scuba diving he ended up dying because he didn’t know what he was doing. Ashley Keaton, the captain defense attorney said that in order to prepare for the championships “You start out going through the whole case, going through everything and you come up with a case theory and that is the principle of how you approach the case. From there you write a direct examination, a cross examination and a closing statement”.

As the captain defense attorney, Keaton seems to be significantly involved with mock trial and very prepared. When asked if she enjoyed being the position that she is she replied with, “Oh for sure, I love it. My favorite thing is being sassy.” For others, like Christopher May, a sophomore in his first year of mock trial feels differently about going to his first world championship. Chris says that his first year of mock trial is really fun, but can be intimidating. As he is portraying the character of a grieving spouse he thinks that it is really fun to “portray someone that he wouldn’t expect to be in a situation that he would never be in”.

On the other hand, Hunter Dickerson, senior who has been involved with mock trial for two years at Faith feels differently about going to the world championship. When asked if his team was prepared or not he compared his team to the dream team of the Olympics, as he said, “Let’s just say I’m Jordan, Greg Sylvester is a young Scotty Pippen, and Ashley Keaton is Charles Barkley.” Very confident in his team Dickerson said that at New York “He will be taking it all..R.I.P to the competition.”

Even though Empire Mock trial was only founded 7 years ago it still has had a significant impact on the students involved. Mr. Bowline, assistant high school Principal of Faith Lutheran thinks that the students are benefitting from the mock trial program at faith because “It is giving them the experience they need, that if they do want to continue with something like this it opens up doors to them in public speaking.” Although Mr. Bowline will not be able to attend the world championship, he still shared his thoughts as to how he feels about Faith competing in the championships. He said, “I think its great, it gets our name out there. We’re representing Faith Lutheran, we’re going around to different places and competing in competitions and it’s just another way to give our students a real world experience.”