The Virginia Mock Trial team won two bids to the American Mock Trial Association National Championship Tournament this past weekend while competing in Washington D.C., beating out schools such as Georgetown, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. The feat marks the fifth consecutive year the team will travel to nationals - currently the longest streak in the country.
The competition was part of the AMTA's Opening Round Championship series.
Nationals will be held in Des Moines, Iowa, where the University will enter both its "A" and "B" teams after the "B" team won first place and the "A" team tied for second. Each team is made up of seven to nine undergraduate students who prepared arguments from opposing sides of a case given to students last August.
The case involved a situation in which a toddler passed away after ingesting "princess beads" coated with a poison. "Mock Trial had to prepare a case from both perspectives: the parent/guardian and the company which produced the beads," team president Marcy Coburn said, adding that a verdict is not returned on the case. Tournaments instead are decided by "presentation and content ... [and] on how well written ... and strategically cohesive," everything is, team captain Reedy Swanson said.
Although the team was favored to win two bids, there's "never any guarantee that anyone will come out number one," Swanson said. "The biggest challenge was fighting against the idea that we were guaranteed two bids to nationals and putting in the work to make sure to make sure we got two bids instead of expecting it. I think we did a really good job of keeping our focus."
Both teams now have begun to tweak and improve their arguments for nationals. The AMTA will release slight modifications Sunday that will force the teams to adapt their arguments to the changes. These adaptations occur once in the fall and three times in the spring, team captain Megan O'Donnell said.
The five captains are responsible for determining specific arguments in a case. Each captain gets one vote alongside Toby Heytens, head coach and University Law professor.
Since August, the team has worked together to develop its cases. "We're just like a family, sometimes we even joke that we're a cult," O'Donnell said.
Members of the University's mock team attributed the their ongoing success to their chemistry. "A lot of our success comes from the mixture of young blood and experience," Heytens said.
Three of the seven individual awards for specific role-play were won by first years. Individual awards for outstanding witness were given to Coburn and fourth-year Engineering student Rohan Sebastian, first-year College students Liam McCabe and Kaz Komolafe and second-year College student Emily Laser. O'Donnell and first-year College student Amanda Swanson won outstanding attorney awards.
The team also took home the Spirit of the AMTA award, which is given each year to the group that exhibits the most professional, civil and courteous qualities based on a vote by all participating teams.
The AMTA National Championship Tournament will take place April 15 through 17.
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