In the Santa Ana Courthouse on Dec. 7, 2017, students are on the edge of their seat as they wait for the scores and the verdict of the trial to be announced. Then the panel of lawyers announce the news: the Woodbridge Mock Trial team lost the trial by three points, which knocks them out of the quarterfinals and ends their season.

Before this trial, the team went undefeated for the entire season. In total, the team won five trials out of six trials. For their success, team members Trent Larson, Briana Machhor, and Claire Verhagen are being honored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, which honors the top mock trial students across the country. Larson is nominated for the closing attorney category, Machhor is nominated for the pretrial category and Verhagen is nominated for the expert witness category. These honors came with hard work. Every trial, the team learned how to develop their skills.

“We learn what judges like and what judges don’t like, even though every judge is different, we definitely learn the things that we should be doing, what we shouldn’t be doing, whose good in a role, how to improve your role, because we get comments from practicing attorneys at every trial that we use to improve our next performances,” Machhor, a senior and the Mock Trial captain, said.  

Mock trial practices four to five times a week, with each practice being two to three hours long. In these practices, the team worked with their coaches to be as prepared as possible by reviewing the trial and looking for objections in order to compose the argument for the trail.

“I think it is hard to remember the little things that are really important in trial and really make that three-point difference to help you win, so it’s hard remembering all these little objections, all these rules, how you can improve your character, and just incorporating these things that would make you a better team,” Sabrina Asefi, junior and mock trial witness, said.

Overall, the team feels proud of the work they have accomplished over the season together.

“I feel like [how we improved] was through practices. I mean we were with each other [almost] every single day, and I think that after each trial we would go to In-and-Out or we would go to Canes and it was just so much fun because we would be [together] as a team,” Rose Esfandiari, a junior on mock trial, said.