The Tyrone Mock Trial B Team finished out the season on Tuesday, February 4 with a close loss to Bellwood.

Despite losing the trial 3-0, the scores from each jury member were all within 10 points.

The entire B team was new to mock trial this year, so while they didn’t win their trials, the experience they gained was valuable.

“The official outcomes of both our meets do not accurately reflect our team’s efforts. For as young and inexperienced as we were starting out, I feel that we competed at a very high-level. It’s quite impressive that we are able to field two Mock Trial teams here at Tyrone,” said B team adviser Joshua King.

The B team’s first trial took place on January 14. The team faced Winder while arguing for the Defense in the case of Addison Babbage v. Ruffed Grouse High School LLC. Unfortunately, Tyrone lost the trial.

The members of the B team are attorneys Mikenzie Weaver, Emma Reese and Hailey Fisher.

The witnesses are Hailey Vanish, Rhaya Gority, and Tyler Vanish.

Due to limited members on both the A and B Team, the B Team witnesses had to play two different roles.

Hailey Vanish had to play both the plaintiff Addison Babbage and the High School Principal Teagan Eckert. Rhaya Gority had to play both the school anti-bullying monitor MaKenzie Zuse and the principal’s daughter Blaine Eckert. Tyler Vanish had to play both the expert witnesses, Dr. Sloan Attanoslof and Dr. Dakota Turing.

This is a very difficult task for the members to do because they have to study each character’s affidavit. Each witnesses affidavit is around five pages long and from that affidavit, they have to learn the character’s personality and why they are involved in the case. All of the witnesses did an exceptional job doing this task.

“It took a lot of work and it was hard to switch between two characters,” said witness Hailey Vanish.

The attorney’s also have to bounce between witnesses for each trial. All three attorneys have to do a direct and cross for each trial. That means they have to learn at least two different witnesses’ statements. They also have to be prepared to object to anything false that the witnesses may say.

Two members of the team were chosen to receive awards at the two different trials.

Freshman Mikenzie Weaver received the best attorney award at both trials and Rhaya Gority received the best witness award at both the trials.

This is great for both Weaver and Gority because it is very unusual for the same person to receive the award at both trials.

“I feel that I performed the best I could and it prepared me for years to come. I’m excited to use what I learned this year to better myself for next year” said attorney Mikenzie Weaver.

With such a young team, the future looks bright for the Mock Trial Team. With the underclassmen now having experience, they can take that experience and apply it to the next couple of years. The mock trial team will be making it to states in no time.

“I consider this to have been a building year. I’ve encouraged this team to stay with it. Now that we have experienced competition, I think our future looks promising and I’m confident the wins will soon follow. I look forward to continuing coaching this team,” said King.