The Whitney Young Mock Trial Team had their first competition on Saturday, October 28th at the Saint Ignatius Invitational. This is the team’s third year, since it was started by Moriah Johnson ‘18, in 2014. The team this year has four returning members, but the rest are new participants. For this competition, the seniors, Reina Liang ‘18, Blossom Mojekwu ‘18, Jai Primer ‘18 and Moriah Johnson, all mentored the new members of the team, led practice, and helped develop their arguments. The team’s two coaches, Ronald Rodgers esq. and Michael Cohen esq., presided over practice and helped develop and coach the new members. Alexandra Swain ‘20 is loving Mock Trial so far, “I’m nervous but excited to be starting my career early by submerging myself in law at a very young age.” This is the goal of the club.

The competition featured two rounds, the preliminary round and the final round. Before the first trial, Ariel Hulfachor ‘20 stated, “I feel like we’re well-prepared. We worked really hard, and we are going to try our best to dominate the other schools because we are awesome lawyers.” And, they did just that. They defeated Trinity, an all girls school, and moved on to the final round. Afterwards, Ariel followed up, “I am so glad we made it to the finals, given this is our first time ever doing this.”

The team was amazing in the final round, against Saint Ignatius, and won second place overall. Ariel Hulfachor and Alexandra Swain were recognized for first and second place top prosecutors, respectively. Hulfachor also received a $500 scholarship. Natalia Granatowski ‘20 received second place for outstanding prosecutorial witness.

Congratulations, ladies, and everyone on the team!