“We try to use our close friendships outside of the courtroom to our advantage inside the court room.”

Mock Trial, which meets 2-3 days a week after school at five o’clock, provides Regis Jesuit students with an opportunity to gain valuable courtroom experience and compete with other schools around the country.

Senior Charlie Smith said that even though the team lost eight seniors this year, “it has been really great to see all of the underclassmen that joined this year” but it’s still “hard to say whether or not the team’s performance will be better or worse than last year.”

Most recently, the team competed at the Providence Cup, which is a highly competitive national tournament hosted by the Sturm School of Law at the University of Denver. The event serves as a highly competitive pre-season meet which took place on Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17. This year, the Regis Jesuit team consisting of Jack O’Hollearn ’16, Ryan Zoellner ’16, Charlie Smith ’16, and Sam Dorchuck ’17 placed sixth out of twenty teams.

The Providence Cup is a part of The Providence Foundation of Law and Leadership which serves to help high school students who are interested in the justice system find opportunities to explore careers and gain experience through activities like mock trial.

“It is a really great experience because you get a lot of exposure to teams from different states all with slightly different approaches to trial and procedure,” said Zoellner.

The case, which students are provided with in early September, is always based on real life historical events. This year’s case dealt with the shooting of Trayvon Martin in early 2012.

Mock Trial will compete at Regionals on February 26 and 27, 2015 at the Arapahoe County Courthouse. The team also hopes to compete at State in March. For more information about Colorado High School Mock Trial events, click here.

“Through manipulation and careful preparation, each team’s case takes a different spin and it is cool experience to see,” said Smith.