S. L. FULLER
News Editor
Finishing 18th out of 24 teams, the Fredonia Blue Devils’ Advocates made the most out of their trip to the Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS) for mock trial. Held at Penn State University this past weekend, Fredonia was in the company of schools including Harvard, Yale, Cornell and University of Rochester during the competition.
“Everybody was super nervous our first round,” said Jorge M. Antonetti, senior public relations and psychology double major, who played the role of a witness during the case. “We’’e around these big name schools [and] … it’s bad enough that they’re already academic powerhouses, but on the mock trial circuit, they are notorious for being viciously good.”
Despite placing in the bottom half of the competition, Fredonia still walked away with some personal victories. Antonetti won an “Outstanding Witness Award” for one of his roles, and was a single point shy of winning the same award for his second witness role. Not to mention that the team placed ahead of much larger universities, such as Syracuse and Rochester.
“[The outcome was] not bad, considering we did better than some teams we thought for sure were going to do a lot better than us,” said Antonetti. “Our expectations were high for what kind of competition we were going to face.”
Being a rookie team at the ORCS, the team wasn’t sure what exactly to expect. Antonetti explained that at different levels of competition, judges are looking for different things. Sometimes, they’ll throw curveballs at teams just to see how quickly they can think and how well they can hold their own in unexpected scenarios.
“Every team, at least at this level, has shown that they know the case,” said Antonetti. “Judges are looking for what you’ve added [to] it, and are testing your knowledge of the law by seeing if you can beat it when it seems to have worked against you.”
So how did Antonetti and his team members maintain their composure when up against a tricky judge and a really good team?
“For me personally, it was remembering that everyone we were facing was a normal college student just like me,” said Antonetti. “They did the same stuff I did on the weekend and were just as nervous running their part in court as I was.”
Among his favorite parts about the competition, Antonetti listed team bonding and gaining knowledge about the national tournament in general. And as a senior, this last competition was bittersweet for him.
“For me, the best part was the experience — to know that I go to compete at a national level,” said Antonetti. “It made me sad that I’m not going to be able to come back and do even better than this year, but I know the team that I am leaving is totally capable.”