Mock Trial Team Places 2nd in State

Six members of Indian Springs School’s award-winning Mock Trial team placed second at the 2017 Alabama YMCA Youth Judicial competition held the first weekend of November in Montgomery. Of the five teams that Springs fielded at the competition, two teams ranked in the top 10, a third team ranked in the top 15, and a fourth team in the top 20 at the statewide competition.

 

Springs’ top-placing team, which included captain Liz Jones ’18, Cher Hu ’18, Bela Patel ’18, Abigail Mathis ’18, Deven Patel ’20, and Peter Scalise ’18 earned its second place award for best defense in the state.

 

Two members of the team—Jones and Patel—competed earlier this year in the highly competitive 2017 National High School Mock Trial Championships, where Springs ranked 14th out of 47 teams (the highest ranking achieved by an Alabama team in the history of the national competition, which began in 1984). In addition, Davis Tyler-Dudley ’17 was named 6th best attorney at the competition—the highest best attorney ranking ever awarded to an Alabama competitor. Springs teams also placed third in the nation at the 2015 and 2016 YMCA National Judicial Competitions.

 

Faculty advisor D’Anthony Allen attributes the teams’ strong showings to commitment and work ethic. “The members practice twice a week as a whole, and individually on the weekends and in the afternoons,” he says. “There are some schools we compete with who teach mock trial as a class, but our students are doing this as an extracurricular activity, on their own time.”

 

Allen thanked Springs’ volunteer coaches, psychologist Carole Mazer and attorney Dylan Black, for helping prepare the teams to handle complex issues, such as the murder case they faced at the state competition. As award-winning team members graduate and move on, talented underclassmen are "following tenaciously" in their footsteps, says Allen, who is offering a new Rhetoric and Trial Law elective this semester. “They already have an understanding of what it takes to win,” he says. “I’m just really proud of them.”

 

Indian Springs’ Top 20 teams:

 

Captain: Liz Jones ’18

Cher Hu ’18

Abigail Mathis ’18

Bela Patel ’18

Deven Patel ’20

Peter Scalise ’18

 

Captain: Bin Cho ’18

Jordyn Hudson ’21

Ethan Howell ’21

Ashton Dudley ’20

Elizabeth DePalma ’20

Kendall Owens ’19

Lisa Hobdy ’19

 

Captain: Alice Zhang ’18

Tenniel Miao ’19

Victoria Kindall ’21

Jennifer Feng ’18

Amy Li ’18

John David Haws ’20

Rachael Murdock ’18

Bennett Atkins ’18

Captain: Isaac Zhou ’19

Lesley Xu ’20

Sally Shang ’21

Chloe Jeffcoat ’21

Scout Carruthers ’20

Caroline Ritchie ’19

JP Doucet ’21

Molly Webb ’19