By Karxyriah Ashley

Hard-work, preparation, and dedication. At the 72nd Annual Youth and Government State

Conference held in Austin, 41 Judicial District Court Teams from schools all over Texas came together to compete for a chance to go to Nationals.

Throughout the day, the blood, sweat, and tears that each team put into preparing the court case was showcased during mock trials.

Although, by just watching the trial, the sheer difficulty of playing a witness, attorney, or bailiff, might go unnoticed, it has been a long and hard road for many teams to get to this point.

One team from Dripping Springs High School had months of morning practices and even did last minute practicing in the elevator to make sure they were even more prepared.

Even though, due to scheduling, they had to do a lot of individual and last minute practicing, “in the end we pulled it all together,” said delegate Gabriel Peeples from Dripping Springs.

“Based off the critiques from the trials we’ve been in I think we have a good chance of going [to Nationals],” said Peeples.

For Peeples, the hardest part about this year’s case was “clearing up with the attorneys a lot of different questions and how to answer if the opposing team asks unexpected questions.”

However, overall, “I enjoyed working on this case because there’s a lot of different angles and ways to approach it at for either team,” said Peeples.

Another hard-working team from Hays High School had began meeting in August to “go over the case, read through the affidavits, and come up with questions for defense and prosecution attorneys so we could help each other,” said Preston Jones.

“The hardest part Isn’t always going over the facts but thinking about what is the other team going to say or what someone else is going to think of that we have never met before,” said Nick Muller of Hays High School.

However, after all is said and done, “I personally enjoyed working on this case because it was a lot more challenging for the prosecution and that made it more interesting, said Jones.

Although every team can’t be in the top, no matter what happens ever team competed today knowing they performed to the best of their ability.