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GSHS Mock Trial team going to state comp

Amanda Holt MillerPost Independent Staff

Glenwood Springs High School has maintained its untarnished record in the Colorado Mock Trial circuit. Two of the school’s three teams are headed to the state competition March 3-4 in Denver.Mock Trial is a roll-play competition sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association, in which students take on the rolls of lawyers and witnesses and try a case.At the regional competition in Grand Junction last weekend, the school took first and third place, with its third team landing in a three-way tie for sixth place out of 12.Expectations are high for the two teams headed to Denver in March. GSHS has won the last four state championship titles. Five members of the top GSHS team went to the national competition last year with the team that took eighth place out of 46.”I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to look that far forward yet,” said Rifle Municipal Court Judge Victor Zerbi, who’s coaching the students. “It’s been very, very tough competition to get there.”Zerbi said the two teams headed to state will use the next couple weeks to fine-tune their cases and polish their witness portrayals.”We learn a lot from competing with other schools,” he said. “It’s good that we have three teams; we can scrimmage with each other, but we do end up looking a lot like each other sometimes. It’s interesting to see how different teams interpret the case.”The second team, which took third place in last weekend’s regional tournament, performed well with just one loss in four rounds. And the third team won two rounds and lost two. Both teams had several young and inexperienced members.”Our third team was the youngest in the tournament,” Zerbi said. “They are all freshmen and sophomores, and they were competing almost exclusively against junior and senior teams.”In addition to team wins, the regional competition recognized the best student lawyers and witnesses. GSHS students swept five of the 10 special recognitions. Those students were Drew Walters, Dylan Walters, Angie Vichick, Anna Treibel and Daniel Trejo.”If you close your eyes while these kids are performing, you could be in a real courtroom, listening to a real trial,” Zerbi said. “And it would be one of the better trials.”


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