The Lake Highlands High School Mock Trial Team will travel to Nashville, Tenn., May 9-10 to complete in the High School Mock Trial National Championship.
The eight team members won the privilege of representing Texas in the contest when they won the state championship in March over 26 competing teams. After winning the competition, each Lake Highlands team member received a $300 scholarship.
“We had a fabulous competition, and our kids just rose to the competition,” says team sponsor Richard Bill, a chemistry teacher at Lake Highlands High School.
“They won by just one point, which I think may be the closest competition ever for the Texas mock trial contests.”
In mock trial competitions, each team is given the same case to study, prepare arguments for and present to judges. The case used for the state competition involved “a 17-year-old gang initiate who was supposed to have planted a bomb at a state fair,” according to team member Suzi Yee, a senior.
“He was on trial for exploding a pipe bomb, but he said he thought it was just a fake when he planted it.”
Since winning the state contest, the team has spent the past month preparing for the national competition.
“We’ll spend at least 15 hours together each week working on the case, in addition to the time we study on our own,” says Yee, who played the role of an attorney in the previous case.
“In order to see one side of the argument, you have to really learn both sides, so we will be able to serve as either prosecution or defense.”
Throughout the school year, the team has been coached by neighborhood attorneys Michael Reindollar and Steven Russell. Reindollar started helping the team out several years ago when his daughter was on the team. Russell volunteered after hearing about the team through a friend. Both of them attended team meetings and sometimes participated in an exchange of faxes to help team members refine their presentations.
“Mock trial has been really instrumental in helping me determine what I want to do for a profession,” says Michael Weaver, a junior on the team. “I thought I might want to be a lawyer, so I went into this to try to make sure.”
In addition to serving as a prosecution attorney, Weaver also was given the role of a defense witness just two days before the state competition.
The dual personalities required him to alternate his attire between the sophisticated suit of an attorney and the casual attire appropriate for the witness facade.
Yee says she also is considering law as a profession, but not all team members consider mock trial the first step to a career.
“I’m not really thinking about law as a career, but mock trial has really given me a greater understanding of what lawyers do,” says Brian Ashcraft, a senior on the team.
“If I am ever picked as a juror in the future, I will have a better insight into the process.”
For Ashcraft and others, poise and confidence are among the major benefits of mock trial experience.
“I think it really helps you think on your feet and makes you comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people,” Ashcraft says.
Team members are Tricia Hamilton (senior), Jamie Rohde (senior), Suzie Yee (senior), Brian Ashcraft (senior), John Kent (soph.), Aisha Bunton (soph.), Nya Wyatt (soph.) and Michael Weaver (junior). The team’s co-sponsor is Johnny Kim.
