Germantown mock trial team succeeds without lawyer coach
Minutes after elimination from last month's Shelby County mock trial competition, Germantown High students approached Brian Bourne, a Millington lawyer and the event's volunteer judge, to thank him.
But that wasn't all they had planned.
Senior Pauline Mireles, with her dark curly hair and confident smile, threw out a question—any chance Bourne would coach them next year?
He looked at her and her nodding teammates a bit dumbfounded. What about their current coach?
They didn't have one, Mireles explained. And they hadn't had one in three years. Mireles served as a player-coach for her team of about 12 students, building off her experience from her freshman year—the last year a lawyer advised the team full time.
"It put an entire new perspective on their performance," Bourne said, noting they did well but were outperformed. "If I had not sat there as a judge, I would not have believed that a high school senior--I don’t care if she had been participating three or four years--could have coached fellow high schoolers to be that good."
Mireles, who needs more than 10 fingers to list all her extra-curricular activities and asks admissions officers whether their schools allow triple majors, will head to college in the fall. But she's willing to spend the first few weeks of August helping the next team succeed. She said she knew during her sophomore year that if she quit, the team wouldn't survive. She didn't want to be responsible for other students not being able to have the same experience she had and loved.
"Mock trial’s definitely been my baby," she said. "A very temperamental baby. One that wakes up at midnight every day for four years."
The mock trial season begins in early fall with new members learning legal terminology, courtroom etiquette and rules of evidence. Then in November, the Tennessee Bar Association distributes the case files for that year's competition. Students have until the tournament in mid-February to examine affidavits, along with witness and evidence lists to make their case. Team members perform as both lawyers and witnesses for the competition held in courtrooms downtown.
Teams are not required to be coached by a lawyer to compete, only to have a faculty sponsor at the school who is in charge of logistics like signing up the team for the competition, maintaining the roster and reserving classroom space for practices on evenings or weekends. The Germantown team has such an adviser. A statement from Shelby County Schools said Germantown's principal was unavailable for an interview but that the district is "committed to providing access to high-quality extracurricular activities to all of our students."
Mireles said it may be a lack of awareness on her school's part. That just like a football team needs more than an equipment manager, mock trial needs a coach who attended law school.
"We’ve done our best to compensate for this," she said modestly.
What she's done is save the team from the brink of extinction, rallying her friends—she jokes about using blackmail—to join, making lesson plans to teach herself and the others concepts usually tackled in the first year of law school and organizing marathon weekday and weekend practices for months.
Mireles said she reached out to lawyers over the years, but had little success finding one who could give more than a few days to her and her team. She often spent those days teaching them about mock trial rules so the lawyers could teach the team how to work within them. Another factor, she said, has been the shifting dynamics of the team after the formation of the Germantown Municipal School District. Her school stayed with Shelby County, but many of her fellow city of Germantown residents transferred to Houston High.
"Most of the people who were bringing in the wealth, and that demographic, booked it to Houston," she said. There's no longer a plethora of lawyer parents to ask for help. Several current team members would be the first in their families to go to college.
The requirements are intentionally low to allow teams like Germantown's to participate, Sam Fargotstein, co-chairman of the Memphis Bar Association's young lawyers division, said. But there's a difference between what's required literally versus practically.
"The teams that do compete and make it far every year are blessed with extremely dedicated coaches that are there night after night and really dedicated to it and can sort of keep the consistency year after year," Fargotstein said. "For a team to be able to compete and impress judges without that continuity or without that experience that a coach provides is truly remarkable."
He added, "I'm impressed, but I’m also kind of disappointed in the community for no one stepping up to help them."
Bourne said that in 10 years of coaching and judging high school and college mock trials, Mireles' question was the most surprising.
He sadly declined, as his job won't allow him to dedicate the hours needed to help. It's an intense program, one that makes finding a coach hard.
Mireles positioned junior Telesa Ward to take over for her next year. She'll have hefty recruiting to do in the fall, as more than half the team graduates this spring.
"I’m trying to get my friends to join next year," Ward said, "so hopefully the club can continue and I won’t be the only member."
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer.pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.