Main Lines Mock Trial Team Goes National F

or only the second time in school history, the Haverford College Mock Trial team reached the American Mock Trial Association’s National Championship Tournament this year. In a field that started out with more than 700 colleges and universities nationwide, the nine-member team, advanced through the regional tournament in Washington, D.C., and later the Opening Round Championship Series to become one of just 48 teams that qualified to compete for the national title in Memphis, Tennessee, in April.

This is the fourth consecutive year the Fords have made it past regionals and into the Opening Round Championship. The team’s previous appearance at nationals was in 2018, when the senior-laden team that had founded the program four years earlier finished in 11th place.

This year’s achievement is even more impressive given the group’s relative inexperience, and the fact that Haverford was one of the only teams at the national tournament that is completely student-run. “We don’t have faculty or staff members who help us prepare,” says Schiffer, the team co-captain. “We don’t have local attorneys who are with us. It was literally just us—the entire team helping each other prepare.’’

The team typically conducts three two-hour practices a week in which the students prepare each other as attorneys, witnesses, and planners—roles that might be played by faculty advisors or outside mentors for teams at other schools. The season consists of several tournaments at colleges in the region where the team can fine-tune its arguments.

The Haverford team finished 20th in its division, in which defending champion Harvard emerged as a finalist. In the end, the Crimson lost to UCLA, another perennial powerhouse, whose team took the championship.

The entire experience, though, from start to finish, was “phenomenal,” says Ceci Cohen ’24, who co-captained the Ford team with Rachel Schiffer ’23, the sole senior.

Other team members included John Donovan ’24, Ben Fligelman ’26, Ethan Minzer ’26, Isabella Otterbein ’26, Bella Salathé ’25, Rebecca Stern ’24, and Chyane Sims ’26.

The Haverford group did all of this, organized their trip to Memphis for the national competition, and made the most of it once there. Besides Harvard and UCLA, other schools at the tournament included Baylor, Brown, Fordham, Georgetown, Michigan, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Yale.

The group hopes that reaching nationals will attract more funding (which has come mostly from alumni donations), and perhaps even interest from attorneys who could offer guidance. With all the members save Schiffer returning to the team, the potential to improve upon this year’s success is great.

“What I want the group to take away from this is how the work they put into it paid off,’’ says Schiffer. “They are national competitors and should be really proud of that.”

—Sam Donnellon