Dickinson’s mock-trial team has added 18 new members this year as it tries to follow up on the national level of success of it experienced last season.

“The last year of mock-trial was one of the most successful seasons Dickinson has ever had,” said political science Prof. Doug Edlin, who co-coaches the team with Judge Edward Guido ’72. Edlin said last-year’s team made it to the American Mock Trial Association’s National Championship competition in Cincinnati.

When the Class of 2015 graduated last May, the team lost its “strongest, largest group in one class year,” said Edlin, who has been coaching the team for 10 years. Despite the loss of these key members, Edlin said that 21 students tried out for the team this year, a number he called “very encouraging.” In addition to the 18 new members who were selected from try-outs in mid-September, the team also has 17 returning members.

Team secretary Caroline Pappalardo ’18 said that overall the team has “a good mix of first-years through seniors,” which she describes as “exciting” for the coming year.

Although it’s early in the year, team president Abby Preston ’16 says she sees “a lot of promise” in the new group.

“It is sort of a big transition year because we lost a lot of really, really good seniors last year,” said Preston. “No matter how far we get, we’re going to be really happy.”

Edlin said the program usually attracts political science or law and policy majors, but that in his time as a coach the team has also included English, history, physics, biology, and psychology majors. As a whole, the team draws “a pretty wide group of students in terms of their intellectual or academic interests,” he said.

The coaches of the team try to use it as an educational program first, and as a competitive program second, as the team has both members who participated in mock-trial throughout high school and members who have never done mock-trial before, Edlin said.

“We try to teach the new students while we’re also helping the experienced students learn the case,” said Edlin. “People can learn as much as they want, but obviously, in the end, mock-trial is also a competitive activity, so we try to put the two strongest teams together that we can for the regional tournament.”

Pappalardo said that this “learning-based” idea and the fact that Dickinson is a smaller school make it even more “exciting” that the team made it to the National Championship competition. Many of the other schools the team faces are big schools with “heavily-funded” programs, she says. Looking to the coming year, Pappalardo thinks the mock-trial team can do well, and says everyone on the team is very “eager… excited to learn and passionate.” She looks forward to an exciting new year and their new case.

Every August the American Mock Trial Association sends out a case that will be used in all of the competitions that year, said Edlin. They alternate between civil and criminal cases. This year’s case is a criminal one.

The team practices “two days a week for around two hours each night”, and leading up to tournaments they practice in Guido’s courtroom, which Edlin says is “really beneficial” because the courtroom atmosphere is very different than that of a room because of where the judge and jury are seated.

Edlin says the team will start by going to invitational tournaments, and then a regional tournament in February. Top teams from this regional tournament go on to the first round of nationals, and the top teams from this round go on to the National Championship tournament, which is held in a different city each year.

The invitational tournaments will start in November, according to Preston.