Menlo News March 02, 2015

Mock Trial: We Are The Champions

Who’s #1? Menlo Mock Trial! Read about about their win in this piece by Tiffany Tam ’18.

Menlo Mock Trial won their fifth straight San Mateo County championship, sweeping Hillsdale High 8-0 on the ballots and bringing their record to 50-0 in San Mateo trials the past 5 years. They’ll head to the California State Championship in late March.

12 top high school mock trial teams participated in the 5th annual NorCal Mock Trial Tournament, hosted by Menlo School in January. This year’s tournament featured the defending NorCal champion, the defending State champion and four of last year’s state Top 10 finishers among other top California teams. In one of the closet final matches in memory, Menlo School finished first in this year’s tournament, with defending champion Tamalpais High School coming in second, and co-host Trinity High School placing third.

NorCal is the only major tournament in California to include a methodology for pre-seeding, complete scoring, and tournament awards for all positions. As junior Shayanna Ahuja puts it, this tournament is “a great opportunity for some of the best teams in the state to come together and compete.” Every year, the Constitutional Rights Foundation releases a unique case that each participating school studies and performs in competition. This year’s case is ‘People vs. Shem,’ and the defendant, graduate student Evan Shem, faces a count of art theft by grand larceny. The pretrial matter regards the Fourth Amendment, and its protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Menlo Senior Allie Miller said, “I think the team is farther along at this point in the season than ever before, as evidenced by the win. That’s exciting because it means we have the potential to do really well at county, state and maybe even nationals, but only if we keep working hard.” Senior JB Horsley described the final round as “unbelievable. The final round with all of the teams here was so good and [I feel] so lucky to be a part of this tournament.” In addition to Menlo placing first overall, Menlo witnesses JB Horsley, Claire Horsley, Rebecca Shoch, Sadie Bronk, and Lauren Henske each won individual awards, while Jennifer Scott was named best clerk.