Mock trial team success at Kittatinny

Hampton - “Well, cooking burgers and finishing cooking burgers are two different things, silly! To cook the burgers, you use the timer, to finish cooking them, you just have to put them on a bun, so it’s really more like she was rushing our hands,” explains Jojo Franks to a confused lawyer. The courtroom is completely silent. You could hear a pin drop. The lawyers may not be real, but the judges certainly are. The ten students from Kittatinny Regional High School train for this moment all year, sometimes five days a week. There are plenty of clubs at Kittatinny, but the students on the mock trial team feel as though they are a family. All ten hard-working students of the mock trial team, along with their two coaches and lawyer coaches, can attest to that. Since November, they have given up almost 200 hours of their time to prepare for their various trials - and it has certainly paid off for them. They won the county event with two victories over Vernon, along with victories over Newton and Wallkill. Focusing solely on their accomplishments in the courtroom, however, would be to ignore the most important aspect of the team, according to these students. “I love all of my teammates,” says sophomore Carolyn McGrover, who plays Franks. “They all give me courage and strength and without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today.” “To have a chance to be a part of a program that has won about 10 of the past 12 county titles is a great feeling and it’s rewarding to see all the work we do pay off,” says Christie Pazdzierski, a senior lawyer in her third year with the team. “We all spend a lot of time with each other outside of school, and to be able to meet new people and then share something meaningful with them is extremely rewarding.”