It was a busy weekend for all three Hillsdale Mock Trial teams.
Returner team Platypus Deniability closed their fall invitational season with a 6-2 ballot and a second-place finish behind Yale at the Harvard Boston Tea Party, while returner team Kangaroo Court placed fifth at the University of Wisconsin Badger the Witness invitational with a score of 8-4. New member team Koalafied ImNEWnity also competed at Badger the Witness, finishing the weekend with a score of 6.5-5.5.
Platypus Deniability swept its first three rounds against the University of Texas, Tufts University, and Princeton University before dropping two ballots against Yale, who won the Harvard Invitational, according to sophomore and Platypus Deniability co-captain Ty Tomasoski.
Tomasoski said the team hit excellent competition, which is what they had been hoping to get out of their last tournament of the fall season.
“Our round against Princeton especially, I thought was extremely good,” Tomasoski said. “The witnesses were great.”
Sophomore Ella Lovins said the team had a fantastic weekend.
“We brought our A-game the whole weekend, and it paid off,” Lovins said. “Our witnesses had easily their best performances of the year.”
Senior and Platypus Deniability co-captain Njomeza Pema won an individual award with a perfect 20-rank score, according to Tomasoski.
“Njomeza put on some of her best performances in spite of having a high fever throughout the weekend,” Tomasoski said.
Lovins said Pema gave tight and eloquent objection responses.
“Last year, she was a fantastic competitor,” Lovins said. “This year, she somehow beat everything she did last year.”
Kangaroo Court lost the first round 0.5-2.5 against Case Western Reserve University’s A Team before defeating Carleton College’s B Team 2-1. Kangaroo Court then swept the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 3-0 before a 2.5-0.5 victory against the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
“We put in a good amount of time before our first tournament to write the material, memorize the material, and then we’ve been repping the material consistently between the first tournament and the second tournament,” McDonald said. “So our performance definitely went way up. Our objection responses were really good.”
Kangaroo Court co-captain and junior Patrick McDonald said his team’s performance this weekend marked significant improvement from the team’s first tournament of the season two weeks ago. McDonald said he especially enjoyed the team’s closing arguments from junior Nathan Emslie and sophomore Jon Hovance.
“They were fantastic,” McDonald said. “All four speeches were just joys to listen to. Especially at the end of a three hour long trial, hearing a summation of the evidence being presented in a very persuasive, winsome — and in both John’s and Nathan’s cases — entertaining way is definitely a joy.
Koalafied ImNEWnity also competed at the Badger the Witness Invitational, according to junior and team co-captain Valerie Check. The team swept Carleton College’s B Team and Macalester University’s A Team with scores of 3-0 before losing 0.5-2.5 against the University of Illinois’s A Team and 0-3 to the University of Indiana’s A Team.
The weekend also saw two new members win their first individual awards as well. Sophomore Gabriel Higbie won a 27-rank Witness Award, while freshman Aaliyah Dobson won a 26-rank Attorney Award, according to Check.
“They put in so much work,” Check said. “They repped their stuff the night before, in the weeks before — they put in so many hours. We’re so proud of them.”
According to Check, the team as a whole showed very clear improvement from their first tournament together.
“You could see how hard they were working in their performance, in their memorization,” Check said. “So we were really excited to get them a second tournament under their belt and prepare for this coming weekend. We had to cancel practice the day after the tournament because we got back at 2 a.m., and they still texted us asking, ‘Hey, can we do practice anyway?’ Which is a testament to how hard they’re working.”