I'm Going To The Iowa High School Mock Trial State Competition

So, as might my last post says, I went to Mock Trial regionals.  Out of the ten teams that competed, only three would make it to the Iowa High School Mock Trial State Competition. The only way you could go to State was if you won both of your rounds. My team was one of those teams.

Marion Homeschool had two teams this year. The "older" team with the more experienced students, and the "younger" team that only had one student that had done mock trial before; me. Despite my team having some very talented people, the other team was much better than us. They put a lot more work into it than us.

In our regional competition, the teams going to State is always dominated by the teams from Robins. Each year, Robins has either two or three teams, and almost all of the time all of the teams go to State. Last year, they had three teams, and all of them went to State. A team from Robins has not only went to State, but won State for the last three years. This year, we had heard that Robins only had two teams, so both of our teams knew we had a chance.

The first round, my team went against a team that wasn't really prepared. At all. To say we dominated would be an understatement. But, it was nice practice for our team to behave in a mock trial environment. Sadly, the next round wasn't as easy. Both of our teams were evenly matched, and it was REALLY close. Yet, when the ballots were in, we won. Barely, I'm sure.

In the first round, the other team also faced a team wasn't as good as them (although the gap of expertise wasn't nearly as big as between my team and the first team we went up against). Things were looking pretty good, until they found out they were going against Robins team one in the second round, without a doubt the best team in our regionals. Sadly, our other team lost. 

Thus, although I'm happy to go to State, it is most definitely bittersweet.

You might see me around a little less. I'm going to be REALLY busy preparing for State.

Not to say I didn't have fun, while we were waiting for the other teams to finish after we were done with our second round, the team that we had went against in that second round came up to us and started talking. We decided to have a game of ninja. Needless to say, it was a great break from the intense trial we had been in. Oh, and I won the game of ninja :)