Last week the St. Dominic Mock Trial team got an email informing them they would be heading to regionals after thinking they would not be moving on. With such short notice, the team had to quickly prepare and take the challenge head on.

On Friday February 18, after months and months of preparation and two phenomenal trials. The Mock Trial team got an email from Mock Trial coach, Mr. Adam Kuebler, saying the team just missed out on regionals. The top 16 schools were moving on and St. Dominic was just out of the running in 17th place.

“When we finally weren’t making it to regionals. I was not surprised because I knew we were right on the edge. I already kind of crunched the numbers myself ahead of time. We were going to be just outside of it, but I was slightly disappointed in the results just because of the way things were calculated, I thought we certainly deserved to be in,” Mr. Kuebler said.

Everything changed on Wednesday March 2, when the team got an email from Mr. Kuebler that was titled, “Mock Trial Regionals,” explaining that the team would be moving on to the regional competition. The team was overjoyed in getting this second chance to be together once again.

“First, I didn’t believe it. I thought they were emailing me about something else then it kind of made sense to me. Knowing that we were right on the outside edge of making it, that if the team dropped out we would be right there to get the next one in,” Mr. Kuebler said.

Even with the victory of getting into regionals, the struggles weren’t over yet. Two of the members of the team had to drop out because of spring sports. The team was down two members and because of the late notice, they had less than a week to prepare. The trial was on Tuesday March 8, and they had a lot to do.

“It was a little nerve wracking at first. Once we found out that we would be missing two people I knew that I would do whatever it took to fill the roles that needed to be filled. If it meant I needed to drop my role or switch my role, whatever needed to happen I was ready to do it,” senior Olivia Knobbe said.

Luckily the spots filled up and the team went to regionals. The team has high hopes that they will go to state. They will find out on Thursday March 10 if they will be state bound.

“I think we definitely have a chance. It really just comes down to the evaluators we get. I think we prepared as best we can and I would not be surprised at all if we make it to state,” Mr. Kuebler said.

Whatever the outcome is, the team fought hard to be where they are today. Their hard work and dedication pushed them to regionals and will hopefully push them to state.