After three months of practicing, the Mock Trial team competed in its first scrimmage against another school on Jan. 17 at the league tournament hosted in the Santa Clara County Office of Education. The tournament gave the prosecution and defense teams a chance to practice their cases against other teams while being judged by lawyers and Mock Trial coaches from other schools.

“We have been practicing against our own team since the beginning of the year,” said sophomore pre-trial attorney Navneet Ramesh, “so this scrimmage allowed us to compete against new teams and hear new arguments and ideas which should help us a lot when we finalize our own case.”

The prosecution team faced off against the Terra Linda High School defense team. Unlike other tournaments, the teams were judged solely on their arguments rather than being judged on their presentation, as they would have been in actual competitions. Based on arguments, the judge ruled that Saratoga prosecution team lost the final verdict, and Terra Linda’s defendant was found not guilty. However, the team members felt that they did a better job of presenting their arguments and case than the other team.

“I think if this was an actual county competition,” said senior co-caption Rishi Taggarsi, “where we would be judged on our presentation not our case, we would have definitely won.”

The defense team scrimmaged against the Soquel High School Prosecution team. Although they presented well, they lost the case. However, they felt that they learned a lot in the process.

“Even though we lost,” said Ramesh, “we really picked up a lot from the other team. They had a lot of new arguments that we hadn’t thought of.”

The next scrimmage will be held against Santa Clara on Jan. 27th. The team will use everything they learned from the competition to perfect their cases for the county tournament, which begins in February.