Dartmouth Wins UMass Amherst Invitational!
MockStars: Back L-R: Sasha Kokoshinskiy ‘23, Gideon Gruel ‘26, Anna Chabica ‘25, Alex Joel ‘25, Uma Misha ‘26, Hayden Welty ‘23, Carter Anderson ‘26, Dylan Griffith ‘25; Middle: Paige Pattison ‘24, Grace Schwab ‘24, Bea Burack ‘25, Vanessa Haggans ‘23, Armita Mirkarimi ‘25, Ben Wilkins ‘24, Parth Dhanotra ‘24; Front: Bella Dunbar ‘23, Kavya Nivarthy ‘25, Neha Bhardwaj ‘26, Fiona Sleigh ‘23, Annmarie Allos ‘23, Rachel Roncka ‘26, and Paridhi Kapadia ‘23.
We are happy to announce that team Orion came in first place and team Pegasus came in fourth place at the UMass Amherst CIIT Invitational Tournament this past weekend. Two Dartmouth competitors received Outstanding Witness awards: Alex Joel ‘25 and Uma Misha ‘26. Three competitors received Outstanding Attorney awards: Bella Dunbar ‘23, Bea Burack ‘25, and Paige Pattison ‘24. Pattison received a perfect score of 20, making her the top-scoring attorney at the tournament. We are very proud of our team’s success and especially want to congratulate all of our new members—our Nebs!—on their outstanding performance in their first-ever college mock trial competition.
President Annmarie Allos was very pleased with the team’s performance: “We had a great showing this weekend. This was the hardest competition we’ve seen at an invitational in a very long time, and we went against some talented teams. Now it’s time to wait for case changes and buckle down for the winter!”
As Allos commented, though we are very pleased with our success this weekend, we also have much to work on before the Regional tournament (and hopefully ORCS and then Nationals!). Our team looks forward to continuing to adapt our case theories, improve our objections, and add some more pep to our witness portrayals before our winter competitions. We plan to compete at Regionals, ORCS, and—for the first time in a few years—national competitions in the months to come.
The case we tried this weekend and will continue working with throughout the competition season is a civil case involving an airplane crash. Plaintiff Ari Felder, wife of the deceased Morgan Felder, is suing Koller Campbell Air LLC for negligence. The case involves lots of technical knowledge about planes, medical ailments, and weather patterns. The case provides many opportunities for creativity and has forced us to become more adaptable from trial to trial.
Since the competition took place the weekend before Week 10, MockStars are now buckling down for finals and preparing to head off for winterim to enjoy a nice five-six week break. Our winter teams will be announced and begin practicing over the break as our MockStars are eager to get going! Be safe and have a happy holidays to all of our MockStars, Mock Adjacents, and Mock Families!
