DANVILLE – Fifteen days.
That’s how long the Danville High School moot court team had to read a 150-page casebook, pull out pertinent details from past court decisions, and write an 18-page brief arguing one of two sides in a fictitious case for this year’s state competition.
“It was crazy,” senior Calvin Huh said. Most years, the team has over a month to pull it off.
But the team from Danville got it done. And what’s more? They did it better than anyone else.
Danville brought home its second straight state title this spring, knocking off arch-rival Indian Hill in the process. Consider it closure for a group that spent months preparing and qualifying for the state mock trial competition in March, only to have the opportunity stripped away at the last minute due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m really happy that we at least wrote the brief for moot court and got to compete, and had a little bit of closure there, because there are some things this year that we really didn’t get any closure on,” senior Adeline Lucas said.
Lucas was one of four seniors on this year’s moot court team. While they didn’t get to experience their senior prom, or a traditional graduation, they did get to finish their high school careers on a high note – as back-to-back state champions.
“I’m really happy that we at least got to do the brief,” Lucas said, “and do the competition at least one more time.”
It’s unclear how many schools participated in this year’s state competition, as each team submitted briefs virtually and the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education, which runs the program, only released the names of the winners and runners-up. Danville edged Indian Hill in the respondent category, which deals with the response to the appeal, while Grandview Heights bested Zanesville in the petitioner category, which deals with the initial appeal of the case.
This year’s case revolved around the issue of campaign infiltration and its intersection with constitutional free speech. The fictitious case in question, State of Buckeye v. Julie Jenkins, involved a budding high school investigative journalist and her infiltration of a gubernatorial political campaign.
Jenkins signs up to volunteer for a campaign she is covering, in an attempt to investigate the campaign from the inside-out. She’s eventually caught using information she learned while on the campaign staff in her reporting, and she’s issued a criminal citation for campaign infiltration. After being found guilty in court, she appeals her case, but her conviction is affirmed.
Jenkins is now challenging her conviction in the Supreme Court of Buckeye (the fictitious state in which she committed the crime), and moot court teams this year were tasked with arguing on behalf of both sides – as to whether Jenkins’ conduct violated the statute under which she was charged, and whether the statute impacts her rights under the First Amendment.
Danville’s coaches said they initially hesitated to push the team to participate this year, given the circumstances. Brittany Whitney, who also serves as the City of Mount Vernon’s assistant prosecutor, said the team was crushed after being denied a trip to the state mock trial competition, and they weren’t sure if or how moot court would proceed.
“[We] had kind of decided that if they didn’t want to do it, we weren’t going to push them to do it,” said Whitney, who coaches the team alongside local attorney Noel Alden and DHS English teacher Hunter Webster. “But I was surprised that they instantly said, ‘Yes, we want to write this 18-page brief. We’re going to do it.’”
With just 15 days left until the May 1 submission deadline, Danville’s six-student team cracked open the casebooks and got busy.
Meeting a tight deadline was one thing, Huh said, but doing it virtually was a separate challenge in itself. The team was forced to meet and work together online in order to adhere to social distancing guidelines.
They met virtually every day for two weeks – one tab open to a shared Google Doc, another open to Google Hangout or Zoom, so they could communicate verbally if need be. Huh said the meetings would typically last 2-3 hours, and they were expected to do their own research (about an hour’s worth) each day as well.
The team managed to crank out the 18-page brief, filled with legal arguments and quotations, with no in-person communication.
“It was a lot,” Huh said with a chuckle. “It was just a lot of hours.”
For Vivian Hawk, also a senior, the process was oddly therapeutic.
“Honestly, I really enjoyed it because I had literally nothing else to do, so it brought some purpose into my life and I had some social interaction with my school friends, through Zoom at least,” she said. “It was a lot of work, but I don’t regret it at all.”
Hawk believes completing the task virtually allowed the team to sharpen new skills this year, and to learn how to become more self-reliant. Without coaches watching, as they usually would during in-person practices, students were forced to focus on “taking initiative and doing your own part,” Hawk said.
“I was very impressed by the fact that they did work so well independently, and I think they probably developed skills as critical thinkers that maybe they wouldn’t have sharpened so much, but for the fact that they were kind of forced to work alone for part of it,” Whitney said.
“The remarkable thing this year was that it really was much more self-directed than it ever has been before. I give the seniors in particular a lot of credit… for getting organized, being self-motivated,” Alden added. “In the crazy world that we’re living in at the moment, they did it and they beat some awful good schools.”
That was the icing on the cake for Danville – beating Indian Hill, one of the biggest and wealthiest school districts in the state, which has won six out of the last 11 mock trial state titles (including last year’s). Despite routinely being one of the smallest schools in OCLRE competitions, Danville consistently challenges – and beats – schools like Indian Hill. Alden says fearlessness is a part of the program’s DNA.
“I’ll take my group of kids and we’ll go up against anybody, there’s no question,” Alden said. “They’ve proven it over and over again.”
After Danville submitted its brief on May 1, the team had to wait 11 days while judges reviewed entries. Finally, on May 12, team members got a text from Webster: they had won it.
“It was honestly a nice surprise because going into it, I didn’t think we were going to compete in moot court, just because it was so close to the deadline that we decided to do it…” Huh said with a laugh. “It was kind of a nice surprise to get to do moot court, and it does bring a lot of closure.”
Normally, the state champion would have been decided in one day. Teams would submit their briefs ahead of time, then come to Columbus in May to present their arguments orally. They would be questioned in-person by a panel of judges and would receive feedback on the spot.
Huh believes that Danville’s versatility allowed it to thrive without the oral portion of the competition. While some teams might lean on a strong oral presentation to mask weaker writing, Huh said Danville has always prided itself on being well-rounded. That paid off this year.
“We have really good writers and really good speakers on our team, which is really nice. So it wasn’t too big of an adjustment…” said Huh, who credited fellow senior Daniel Patrick specifically for his writing prowess. “I think we were pretty well-prepared for either version of the competition.”
Danville won the state competition last year for the first time. It began sending teams six years ago, and up until 2019, the team had never made it past the state semifinals, according to the Mount Vernon News.
Now, with two consecutive titles under its belt, the program will begin its quest for a three-peat. And it will be well-positioned to do so. Two of the team’s six members this year were freshmen, Ryan Lucas and Minda Bates, and both contributed heavily to the team’s brief this spring.
Whitney believes the future is bright for Danville’s surging moot court program.
“Sometimes I think when we have younger kids come on, they kind of just sort of step back and watch. But no, Minda and Ryan were very engaged and they were an important part of the briefs,” Whitney said. “And so thinking about the team moving forward, that’s really exciting, to think that we have now seasoned veterans that are only just going to be sophomores next year.”
Danville’s four seniors recently graduated and will all be attending college next fall. Hawk has been accepted into Kent State University, Huh will attend Patrick Henry College (Virginia), Lucas will head to Liberty University, and Patrick will attend Ohio State University on a full-ride scholarship.
