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At the 2002 National High School Mock Trial competition in St. Paul, Minnesota, 44 state and territorial champions gathered to decide the 2002 national champion. The Indiana champion, a team of eight John Adams High School students, finished in seventh place the highest any Indiana team ever has finished. And they nearly won the national title.
The team consisted of juniors Emily Bell, Megan Marshall, Amanda Miller, Katie Newbold, Ben Parisi, and Esther Warren, and sophomores Amy Marsh and Robert Saddawi-Konefka. Mrs. Judith Overmeyer is the teacher-sponsor for the Adams teams. The juniors have competed together on the same team since their freshman year. Those students became the State champions after defeating a team from South Bend's St. Joseph's High School in the state championship in Indianapolis in March, 2002.
In the first round, the Indiana students defeated the New Jersey state champion, a team from High Point Regional High School. In 2001, the New Jersey champion was the national runner-up. This year, all three judges' ballots favored the Indiana team, with Adams winning the closest ballot by an 87-80 score.
In the second round, the Indiana team defeated the Arkansas state champion, Forrest City High School, again sweeping all three judges' ballots. Results are not announced until the end of the competition, so the competitors were not aware that after the first day's trials, eleven teams were undefeated -including Indiana.
In the third round, the Indiana team was matched against Iowa's Robbins High School, from the state that produced the 2001 national champion. Indiana won the match by carrying two ballots by 6 points each, though Iowa won the third ballot, 88-86.
Five teams Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee emerged undefeated from that third round, and headed into what amounted to the National semi-finals.
Based on the points awarded, the Indiana-Tennessee match was the best of the tournament. High school mock trial scoring judges award up to 10 points in each of 11 categories. One judge awarded the Indiana team 108 points 9 perfect scores, and 2 scores of 9 while awarding 107 points to the Tennessee team. That was the first ballot the Tennessee team lost in the competition. A second judge had Tennessee 5 points ahead. The deciding ballot went for Tennessee, 101-100.
The Tennessee team went on to win the national title by taking four out of five ballots against Pennsylvania, while Indiana's narrow loss dropped the Indiana students to seventh place out of the 44 teams in St. Paul seventh out of more than 6,000 high school mock trial teams across the nation, from Maine to Guam.
The ninth-place finish in 2001 by a different group of Adams students was Indiana's first top-ten finish in the national competition. The brilliant showing of this year's team made Indiana one of only five states (the others are California, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin) with top-ten finishes in each of the last two years.
Indiana's emergence as a premier player on the national stage speaks highly of the mock trial programs in all of the high schools that draw students from around the State. Indiana's showing at the nationals is a great credit to all those de dicated students who participate, to their teacher-sponsors, and to the attorneys and paralegals who help them prepare for competition.
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