On the 24th of February 2024 two teams led by our school’s Drew Moneke faced off against numerous other teams in a series of mock trials in a regional competition.

This represents Mr. Moneke’s first ever time leading a team in a regional competition which created the product of one of these teams making it into the top three qualifying them to go onto the state competition.

This accomplishment by not only Mr. Moneke but the entirety of both mock trial teams have brought upon notoriety to themselves and the school as individuals with a sharp mind and a bright future.

Preparation for the trial was an affair of mass preparation where not a second was wasted .
Conversations were rampant in both classrooms and the trials themselves where every possibility and outcome were discussed and arguments were prepared to face anything that was thrown at them.

Of which they used this prior preparation to compete against the other teams during the regional competition in a criminal case involving the telling of false information to law enforcement involving a plane crash.

During each of the separate trials(which was the same for both West Salem teams), both the defense and prosecution had to drive a convincing argument in order to score the most points for their team.

Points in this competition were divided into several separate sections which is best summarized by one of the competing members of the West Salem High School team Echo Carter, “So each individual person gets a score. Now for attorneys. They can get 10 total points, but witnesses can get 20”.

The ones who are scoring the competitors are members of the mock trial jury as well as a judge which is made up of a group of 2-3 people.

Despite the amount of effort given by all members of the competition they will never know the true scores they were given.

The only thing the competitors will know is who placed in the top 3 of all the teams as these are the teams who would be moving on to the next level of competition which includes one of the West Salem teams.

And yet despite the accomplishments and achievements of ranking in the top 3 of regionals on his first time coaching mock trial teams for a competition Drew Moneke continues to remain humble which he expresses through the line, “Yeah, there’s expectations but there weren’t expectations on placing. So we honored everything that we went on to do. And the results didn’t matter”.

Now that the regional competition is finished the West Salem mock trial teams aren’t slowing down just yet.

With the state competition coming up these teams are readying themselves the prepare for the upcoming trials and even the mock trial team that didn’t make it to the top 3 will be there to assist their teammates in any way possible.

With trials and competitions coming up there leaves only excitement and readiness for the hurdles ahead and yet for the law teams stationed in the upstairs D-wing will always be searching for those who have the passion to help them compete in the trials ahead, that just may be you.