For the first time in its nine-year history, the Fresno State Mock Trial program has two qualifying teams that will compete in this year’s Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS), the first stage of the American Mock Trial Association’s National Championship Tournament.
Fresno State, which has sent a team to the opening round five of the last six years though has yet to advance beyond that point, received bids for its “A-” and “B-teams” to compete in the Newport Beach opening round March 8-9 hosted by UC Irvine. No school can send more than two teams to a national championship opening round.
“We’re doing pretty dang phenomenal,” said Hailey Bonds, a fifth-year student studying English education and a closing defense attorney on Fresno State’s “A-team.”
“We have a really great, cohesive tam this year — a lot of team bonding. We’ve been doing really well because our personalities have mixed very well together … Sending two teams to nationals this year shows how much we’re gaining and how strong our program is becoming.”
The “A-team” — consisting of Bonds, Denise Barnes, Ashley Eggleston, Andrew Bunting, Alyssa Malinoski, Maddy Martinez and Gage Marchini — qualified for the ORCS in the Feb. 15-16 Harvey Wallace Regional hosted by Fresno State.
Fresno State finished fourth in the regional competition (named in honor of the late Harvey Wallace, a former Fresno city attorney and faculty adviser who helped establish the Fresno State Mock Trial Program in 2005), securing a coveted top-seven finish needed to advance to the ORCS.
Bonds came on the verge of tears after winning an outstanding attorney award — a distinction given to the competition’s top 12 attorneys (out of a pool of 120) — an individual honor she said she’s come close to achieving during several competitions, but never boasted until now.
“It’s absolutely amazing. … Always, always, always the bridesmaid — finally getting it was really cool,” she said.
Fresno State’s “B-team” qualified for the ORCS after placing fourth in Saturday’s Claremont Regional at Claremont McKenna College. Kevin Piercy, a prosecution witness on the “B-team,” won a coveted witness award (given to the top 12 witnesses).
The progress and consistency Fresno State has produced and sustained reflects the school’s growing reputation as a West Coast powerhouse that can compete with more established and renowned programs such as UCLA’s and UC Irvine’s, said Grant Mason, this year’s student president and captain of the “B-team.”
“[Fresno State] was a well-established program when I [first] joined,” said Mason, a fifth-year political science and philosophy student who’s been involved in the program all five years, “but to see it go from where we were to now… Back then, if you went against a major school and they saw they were going against Fresno State, they thought they had an easy two ballots.
“Now, schools don’t want to go against us because they don’t know if they can beat us.”
This year’s case, State of Midlands v. Whit Bowman, revolves around Bowman, the defendant who is charged with acting as an accomplice to a man who commits armed robbery at an amusement park.
The ORCS will have an added twist to the case — two more witnesses have been added and the case has been upgraded to murder charges.
Each school had two trials as prosecutors and as the defense. Two judges score ballots per each of the four rounds in the competition totaling eight ballots.
Fresno State won six of its ballots and lost two at the Harvey Wallace Regional — one ballot away from tying first-place UCLA, which finished 7-1.
The key behind succeeding, Mason and Bonds agreed, is selling an argument to the jury.
Bonds said she usually slams a binder when giving her closing argument for dramatic effect. Mason, who plays both a defense and prosecution attorney, says he hones in on the opposing side’s argument trying to “see how I can twist what they say so it helps my side.”
Membership retention rates for the program have risen and have spurred the team’s rise in “national recognition,” Mason said. This year’s mock trial program has almost 40 members.
Fresno State’s “D-team,” composed of the program’s newest members, was three ballots away from giving the school a third team to earn a bid to the opening round — and forcing Fresno State to decide which two teams to send. The “D-team” finished 3-5 in its regional, losing ballots against the “A-teams” of UC Irvine, University of Arizona and UC San Diego, each by one point, said head coach Gordon Park of Fresno’s McCormick Barstow LLP.
“It bodes well for the future of our mock trial program to have such talented new members who will all return next season,” Park said.
The top six teams in the Newport Beach opening round’s 24-team field will advance to the AMTA’s April 11-13 National Championship Tournament in Orlando, Fla.