On February 27, the Buffalo Mock trial team left the High school to board a bus and drive to a courthouse in Cambridge. It’s round five of regionals, the last and the final round determining who advances to State.
Upon arrival, Buffalo was greeted by the judges and St. Cloud Christian’s Mock Trial team. Buffalo was going as prosecution with St. Cloud Christian as defense.
“It’s tough being the Prosecution, seeing as how the defense has a slight advantage over us considering how the case is favored towards the defense,” says Junior Graham Wyatt.
Buffalo started with Senior Jacob Westmann delivering the opening statement, followed by witnesses Junior Lindy Jensen, Colm Macnab, and Micheal Chenowith. Closing arguments from Buffalo were delivered by Wyatt. Buffalo’s head coach who led the team is Social Studies teacher Mrs. Raymond assisted by Social Studies teacher Mr. Ronken.
“It was a complete toss-up, we put on an amazing performance but we just didn’t know. We were waiting for around ten minutes for the judges to come out and tell us our scores, and then they started to tell us about our performance, says Chenowith. After around 20 minutes they told us to come up and get our scores, they weren’t even going to announce it to us. All I can remember is Raymond coming up and giving us the thumbs up. I can remember how happy I felt, I wanted to get up and shout or something. It was an amazing experience I’ll never forget.”
Buffalo ended up with a point diffrential of 8 over St. Cloud Christian, advancing Buffalo to the State level. Buffalo will be competing in Duluth, MN on the days of March 10-11. This is the third out of four years Buffalo has advanced to state.
“It was awesome, the whole thing, I remember looking back at my dad and mom, both were really happy, I wanted to cry because of how happy I felt. I don’t think I’ll forget this, we’ve all worked so hard to get here and I feel like it’s really paid off, says Wyatt. On our way home we got some good news that our buddies from Monticello advanced to State as well, it was just a great day. We finished it off by going to House of Lo and drinking green tea. This is what Mock Trial is all about, working hard and feeling your work pay off. I couldn’t ask for a better team.”
