Team Actors Reus.
Courtesy | Aaliyah Dobson

All three of Hillsdale College Mock Trial’s teams competed in tournaments Oct. 25-26, with veteran upperclassmen team Actors Reus winning first place at Tufts University’s invitational tournament.

Actors Reus finished with a final ballot score of 7-1, sweeping Harvard University 2-0 in the first round, splitting with Rutgers University 1-1, and defeating Haverford College and the University of Maryland 2-0 each. Senior and team co-captain Chloe Noller won a 17-rank outstanding witness award.

“I am immensely proud of the team,” Noller said. “They worked so hard this past week to tighten up the gaps from last week, and re­ally took charge of their own material. It was an excellent tournament, and I felt like we brought the same level of competition to every round.”

The other upperclassmen team, Mens Rea-lity Stars, kicked off their season at Emory University’s Peach Bowl Invitational. They fin­ished with a record of 4-4, losing to the University of South Carolina 0.5-1.5, beat­ing one Rhodes College team 1.5-0.5, losing to another team from Rhodes College 0-2, and then sweeping Stet­son University 2-0.

Senior and team co-cap­tain Valerie Check won a 17-rank outstanding witness award, while senior Patrick McDonald, who is living in Washington, D.C., this semes­ter on WHIP but flew to At­lanta to compete, took home a 19-rank outstanding witness award.

Mens Rea-lity Stars in­cludes Check, senior and team co-captain Nathan Emslie, senior Leonard Fritz, soph­omores Erin McDonald and Ianna Chan, and freshmen Sammy Thompson, Ellie Bear, and Margaret Jackson.

“Both Valerie and Patrick did incredibly,” Emslie said. “Patrick played a different kind of role than he usual­ly does, but he brought a lot of energy to it, and he was extremely well-prepared. Valerie cross-examined the defendant and delivered our opening argument, and she did a very good job in both of those roles.”

In Cleveland, the freshmen team New-lo Contestant-ere competed at Case Western Reserve University’s Spartan Throwdown Invitational, end­ing with a final ballot score of 3-5. They tied with Miami University 1-1, lost to Ohio State University 0-2, were swept by Northwestern Uni­versity 0-2, and then defeated the University of Rochester 2-0.

The competition was held in a downtown Cleveland courtroom, which junior and team co-captain Brennan Ber­ryhill said made the tourna­ment feel more real.

“Being on the witness stand and actually looking up at the jury box during the tourna­ment helped me to get into character a lot more,” Berry­hill said. “Also, being an at­torney and having full ability to move around to give state­ments was super fun.”

Noller said the opposing teams at Tufts performed so well that Actors Reus wasn’t sure where they would place — and didn’t even get to find out the results at the tourna­ment.

“We finished our fourth round but had to leave to catch our flight,” Noller said. “We faced excellent compe­tition, and so it felt like the results could have gone either way. But while we were wait­ing to board our plane, our coach Justin Lee, who was in communication with the coaches at Tufts, told us to gather around and broke the news that we had won 7-1 and took first place.”

Junior Gabriel Higbie, a member of Actors Reus, said he was proud of how well the team worked together to take first at Tufts.

“Everybody was fairly confident, and we had real­ly good communication and flow throughout the entire tri­al,” Higbie said. “The rounds gave everyone the opportunity to learn, and hitting high-lev­el competitions helped us to match the competition and stay practicing, polished, and clean.”

Emslie said he looks for­ward to improving Mens Rea-lity Stars’ efficiency in future tournaments.

“We did well, but looking forward to facing Notre Dame this weekend, we’ll be focus­ing on working as a team and making things cleaner with objections, cross-examina­tions, and repping materials,” Emslie said. “It was a good learning experience, and a good start to the season over­all.”

Berryhill said despite New-lo Contestent-ere’s loss­es, he was impressed with the freshmen’s performances and their improvement from the previous weekend, especially since they faced off against three teams that placed in the top five at Case Western.

“The freshmen have been really impressive,” Berryhill said. “Even though a lot of our team was hoping to get one or two more ballots, especially on some of those tight, close rounds, it shows that we’re hanging with very quality and experienced opponents. I think if we put in the work these next couple of weeks, we can start to flip those ballots.”