Columbus High School’s Mock Trial team went to the Platte County courthouse on Sat Nov 17. They participated as the defense side for a fictional criminal trial case. The tournament was set up as a single elimination. Columbus got moved up to the second bracket but sadly lost to Scotus Central Catholic. The season for Mock Trial is now over but, they have more experiences to use in preparation for next year.

Aaliyah Grafe, sophomore, played the defense attorney for Ricki Glossner (the defendant). Aaliyah felt that for her first year doing mock trial it went really well. For the team’s overall performance, Aaliyah thought “It could have gone better but, we did well for a first year team. Something we could work on for next year would be to call our objections and to come up with better questions to ask.”

“Overall, the kids competed really hard and lost to an experienced team.” Mr. Coan, the man in charge of leading mock trial, said “Based on that competition, we have a solid foundation to build on for next year. “The Columbus team will now have more experienced members in preparation for the coming year to follow. The team of lawyers did a nice job that day along with the witnesses in memorizing their lines. When the witness get their case they have to memorize the entire thing. Lawyers have a bit more freedom and can use facts from the case to make more claims. The overall decision was made by the judge.”

Senior, Fernando Ortiz played the roll of Rizzo Romano. Fernando thought that the competition went pretty good for himself and it was a fun learning experience. “Both the judge and the jury gave lots of notes on what we could improve on and what we did well.” he describes. He hopes that the notes will help a lot for next year.

Overall the mock trial team lost at the competition but still ended up having fun. They got to learn several things in hopes of preparation for next year.