Though Amador Valley’s Mock Trial team has been around for years, it had yet to hosts its first event—until recently. After months of preparation, the team hosted its first Mock Trial Scrimmage against other schools. While not competitive, the event served as a crucial learning opportunity for schools to practice before the official competition season. 

“The Mock Trial scrimmage came about because multiple schools reached out to us and wanted to scrimmage with us. In order to make it convenient for everybody, we decided to have the great mock trial scrimmage and just invited everybody to AVHS and held a big competition,”  Laura Thorpe, current advisor of the Amador Valley Mock Trial said.

Simulating the tense courtroom scenes of a real mock-trial competition, students taking the roles of attorneys, detectives, and witnesses, allowing them to practice real life cases and discover if they’re passionate about the role in the future.

“I’ve been practicing my speech almost every day. We have two attorney coaches that we get to work with, and I’ve had the pleasure of discussing case law with them to ensure my speech is as good as possible. I’ve also been working with the team to make sure my questioning and speaking is up to the standard that I really wanted to be,” Club Officer Rayan Rizvi (’26) said.

Funding the Program

The club raises money to compete in the scrimmages by selling merchandise. These cover the expenses for traveling to competitions. The products are general, such as keychains without the schools logo, and so anybody is able to purchase them.

“Selling merch is like one of the ways we can raise money for the club. So we sold keychains and stickers during the screw mansion. Although we didn’t make as much money as I would have, as many sales as what I would have liked. I still think that this is like a great start to be able to raise funds, to cover all the expenses that you need to run Montreal, the competition fees, the travel fees and all of that,” Team Member Nicole Zhang (’27) said.

The Mock Trial Club is willing to invite more schools for the Mock Trial Scrimmage next year. The scrimmage plays a major role in connecting students from other schools together. 

“All of the coaches that attended said they really liked it. They thought it ran smoothly and they’d like to come back next year. So I think I’m going to expand it and double the number of schools that we invite. And I think it will be beneficial to Alameda County and mock trial programs across the area because it creates a bit of camaraderie and the students get to know each other and to work with each other, “ said Thorpe.