Hillsdale mock trial teams celebrate their success in Illinois.
Joe Newcomb | Courtesy
Hillsdale College’s mock trial teams travelled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over the weekend and took second and fourth place out of 24 teams as three students won individual awards.
The Hillsdale B team, led by co-captains junior Jon Church and junior Kristiana Mork, won all eight of their ballots in the four-round tournament to finish with a perfect 8-0 but took second place because the UIUC A team also finished 8-0 but scored a higher combined strength.
“I’ve never seen a tournament where two teams went 8-0,” Church said. “There was never a round in which we were on opposite sides, so that’s the reason we didn’t go against each other otherwise we would have.”
The Hillsdale A team, led by co-captains senior Jack Shannon and junior Hannah Norman, finished 6-2 to win fourth place.
“We only dropped ballots to the team that won the tournament,” Shannon said.
Church and Norman both took home outstanding attorney awards, and freshman Mark Compton won an outstanding witness award.
“As a freshman, that’s impressive,” Church said.
Both Hillsdale’s A and B teams are freshmen-heavy, so Church said he was happy with how the tournament went.
“That kind of an accomplishment is quite impressive because we had a lot of our experience graduate last year,” Church said. “Over half of my roster is brand new, and the same can be said of the other team.”
Some other schools represented at the tournament were the University of Chicago, Xavier University, the University of Cincinnati, Loyola University, Eastern Michigan University, and Northwestern University.
The mock trial teams’ next tournament will take place Nov. 21-22 at Eastern Michigan University.
