Today at the Iowa Judicial Building, for the first time in the history of Marion Homeschool Assistance Program, we had a team just win the State Competion for Mock Trial.
Let's have a story first, so you can understand how big of a deal this is. Marion Homescool has had a Mock Trial for a long time, I believe about seventeen years, even though I am unsure of the exact total. Although that first year we sent a team to State, it was not until two years ago that we succeeded again. Marion teams had always been mediocre; sure we put time into Mock Trial, but the program was never really competitive. No one knew about Marion Mock Trial, and truly no one cared, we were just another easy team. Even two years ago when we went to State, we placed 31st out of 32 teams.
Last year our top team managed to place in the top ten, which astounded us all, but we certainly were not expecting anything better this year. I know for a fact that every member of our top team would have been overjoyed to just get into top ten again. But to our great surprise, they had won all three of their trials at State, and qualified for the Semi-Finals! Of course we all freaked out (I'm hope I didn't scare anyone), seeing as this was unheard of in the history of our program. We advance through Semi-Finals, and then on to Finals against Valley Highschool, the State Champions two years ago.
Fast forward to right now. In those two years of time our program has been catapulted from being only good at losing to having the best team in the entire State. If you look at the State Champions for the 31 years of its existence, only ten unique highschools have been State Champions (Robins Mock Trial in particular, winning eight of those years). We had always seen finals as being at an almost god-like level that our little program would never hope to match. A team that a couple years ago was completely unknown cracked this club, and Marion Mock Trial will forever be on the map.
Of the four teams Marion had this year, only two went to State, and only one, the Blackhawks, became State champions. Because I unfortunately wasn't good enough to be on our top teams, I instead had the pleasure these last few days of being able to watch trial after trial at a very high-level, yet at the same time not have to worry about stress or messing up (you know you are all jealous). These rounds I've watched, I must admit, I was blown away. I was expecting our team to be good. I was expecting them to be great. But what I was not expecting was the amount of professionalism, preparation, and skill exhibited today in the Semi-Finals and Finals. These are my friends, people who I've worked, played, and hung out with for several years. Suddenly they've all turned into these unbeatable Mock Trial beings who have never met defeat. I'm so ridiculously proud of you guys, words can't even describe how happy I am. It's truly been an honour, and I wish you all great luck at Nationals!
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