Mock Trial recap

From Jan. 21 to Feb. 6, Aragon Mock Trial competed in the 44th Annual California Mock Trial Competition sponsored and administered by Teach Democracy. This year’s case was People v. Gold, a kidnapping case featuring a Fifth Amendment pretrial argument.

The team has grown in the past few years, so much so that the junior varsity team has used double casting for the witness and pretrial roles, starting last year. 

Tryouts are held at the beginning of the school year and help finalize these roles for the varsity and JV teams, further divided into prosecution and defense. By November, the teams have a draft of their content for the case, and focus on practicing their delivery. 

“I talk to myself in front of a mirror and practice my hand motions,” said freshman and JV attorney Ada Peretz. “It’s also fun re-reading the case packet just to practice objections and factual situations.”

The team this year also has four attorney coaches, two more than the year before. As practicing lawyers, they meet with the team weekly to refine members’ performances and courtroom etiquette. 

“I’m a lawyer and sometimes what we do for our jobs isn’t always super fun,” said attorney coach Carolee Hoover. “You don’t get a lot of experience working with younger people that might end up going into that field or being able to share expertise … So this is an opportunity for me and I love it.”

The team also had many scrimmages this year, with schools including Burlingame High School, San Mateo High School and Saint Francis High School in Sacramento.

“[The scrimmages have] helped me prepare for [trials], because I can only guess so much about what they’re going to ask me,” said sophomore and JV witness Gabby Chan. “So   [those gave me] a general idea of what they would cross  [examine] me on and how prepared our team is as a whole.”

Rebuttals and objections are a constant point of focus for the team.

“I’ve had many times where I’ve been on the spot — I have two minutes to talk, and I’ll talk for 30 seconds and I won’t know what to say anymore,” said senior and varsity pretrial attorney Melody Chen. “I’ll stumble and stutter, and it’s really embarrassing … Everyone’s looking at you, your judge staring at you … That humiliating experience is definitely a motivator to not continue doing that.”

While the teams received favorable scores in the first round, they did not perform as well in the second round. 

“Although our team put in good effort … it just comes down to scorers liking certain ways to do things better than others,” said junior and varsity attorney Tomas Canova. “Some scorers like more aggressive teams, other ones aren’t so fond of it.”

Attorney coach Jenny Yi believes that confidence was a major obstacle.

“We had a meeting [after the second round] … telling all the students why they should be confident because they know their facts,” Yi said. “They put a lot of time and effort into it … [Our] students shouldn’t lose confidence because of the pressure from other schools. So we try to help them … recognize their own strengths to build up their confidence.”

Outside of practices, the team maintains its bond through frequent Discord meetings.

“It’s tradition before a match that we play the games Discord offers in their voice calls,” said junior and JV captain Jihye Yi. “It’s always a very good team bonding experience because high school is segregated between grades, and that’s a perfect time for everyone of whatever grade to get to know their teammates better.”

Aragon ended the season placing 6th for both varsity and JV in San Mateo County’s South Division, one of the most competitive divisions in the Bay Area.