Both Teams Win Bids to ORCS
Both teams Orion and Pegasus finished with six ballots at the AMTA Regional Tournament hosted by Brown University from Feb. 22-23.
We’re proud to announce that both of our teams, Orion and Pegasus, have earned bids to the Open Regional Championship Series (ORCS). Our performance at the Brown Regional Tournament brings us one step closer to Nationals.
There were fantastic performances across the board, especially considering that we faced two of the most competitive teams in our Regional, Brown A and Harvard A. But, special congratulations are in order for Kavya Nivarthy ‘25 and Bella Dunbar ‘23, who both won Outstanding Attorney awards, and Paridhi Kapadia ‘23, who won an Outstanding Witness award. Bella and Paridhi are both seniors competing in their last-ever Regional competition, and Kavya is a first-time attorney!
We’d also like to give a special shoutout to all of the seniors who competed this weekend: Annmarie Allos, Bella Dunbar, Vanessa Haggans, Fiona Sleigh, Hayden Welty, Paridhi Kapadia, and Sasha Kokoshinskiy! We love them all dearly and are looking forward to many more trials with them before they step off the plane at the end of the season.
The case we competed with at Regionals is the same airplane crash case we have been working with throughout the season, though AMTA (The American Mock Trial Association) makes substantial case changes from tournament to tournament. We are looking forward to receiving an updated case, which we will argue when we compete at ORCS over spring break.
Competitions are some of our team members’ favorite parts about Dartmouth Mock Trial. Armita Mirkarimi ‘25 recalls “driving to competition and blasting fun music with my teammates” as one of the highlights of the weekend. Bea Burack ‘25 thinks that “the weekend was a fantastic learning experience for everyone on the team. [She] saw each team member improve—whether on objections, cross responses, or courtroom presence—astronomically throughout the tournament.” And our President, Annmarie Allos ‘23, could not be reached for comment because she’s too busy preparing for ORCS.
This week, we’re hard at work celebrating what we’ve accomplished thus far, watching film of our performance at Regionals, and identifying how we can improve going forward. Thanks for being on this journey with us! #RoadToNationals.
