There are many extracurriculars and clubs for students to take part in at WHS; some get students ready for life and others are just fun to do. One of these is a little bit of both.
Mock trial is a club that consists of both law and acting. The participants receive a script of a case and a role, memorize their parts, then compete against other schools in a real courthouse with real attorneys and judges.
“It’s pretty realistic in terms of, you know, what it’s like in an actual courtroom,” Kyle Stapleton (staff), faculty sponsor of the mock trial club, said. Stapleton’s role is to recruit members to the team, supervise and fill out all of the paperwork and other bureaucratic material that needs to be taken care of. “(I) really just kind of support the team,” he said.
For the students on the team, there is a lot to like about the club. For Adeline Freytag (11) it is the atmosphere that makes her happy.
“I really like the community. Everyone gets along really well,” Freytag stated. This is Freytag’s second year doing mock trial and not only does she like the community, but she also enjoys the tasks that the club entails. “I really love the challenges of memorizing the characters.”
The season for mock trial has already begun and the students have already started preparing, but, if you are lucky, there might be an opening for you.
That was the case for Lianyi Chen (11). “Last year, I totally missed the mock trial posters around the school and I also wasn’t in any clubs prior because I just wasn’t, like, an extracurricular kind of person,” Chen said. “I didn’t know if they were still recruiting, but I ended up getting lucky and joined the day (Stapleton) was supposed to submit the roster. So he squeezed my name at the last minute.”
Chen played the role of a doctor during the tournament last year and was interviewed and cross examined during the tournament. Chen was so good that she ended up winning the best witness award for the regional competition. She said, “I think it took me a solid three seconds of processing, and I was like ‘oh my gosh.'”
At the end of the day, it’s not about winning the tournament or being the best, but it’s about seeing the final product of what a small club can do; there are currently 19 members of mock trial this year.
“I think at the end, seeing it all come together, you know, the chaos, the hard work — and it is a lot of work, you know — they put a lot of effort into it,” Stapleton said. “I think just kind of seeing them up there and kind of taking the stuff that we’ve learned and then just watching it kind of click and then they kind of figure it out.”
The mock trial tournament is Feb. 21-22 at a Fort Collins courthouse. If the students finish in the top four, they will head to the state tournament.
