Holy Spirit High School mock trial team just misses trip to nationals, loses in New Jersey finals

NEW BRUNSWICK - Holy Spirit High School's mock trial team just missed its shot at the National Mock Trial Championships with a loss in the state finals Wednesday afternoon to West Morris Mendham High School in Morris County.

The 11-student squad from Holy Spirit spent nearly two-and-a-half hours competing in front of about 80 spectators at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, nearly 100 miles from the parochial school's campus in Absecon.

Tears were in the eyes of some Holy Spirit team members after N.J. Supreme Court Justice Roberto A. Rivera-Soto and Passaic County Superior Court Judge Marilyn C. Clark announced the other team had won.

The disappointment stemmed not only from their second-place finish, but the end of a season spent with peers who now feel like family, senior Andrew Bishop said.

"It was a major factor in getting us this far," the 18-year-old Absecon resident said.

Holy Spirit bested 249 teams to make it to Wednesday's competition. They will get another crack in 2011, when they will have to rebuild after seven seniors on this year's team graduate.

The momentum and extra attention generated by this season's success could help recruit untapped talent among students there, said 17-year-old junior Katie Gibbons, of Margate.

"We're losing a lot of key people, but ... our success opened the eyes of a lot of people at our school," she said.

Holy Spirit acted as the defense Wednesday, pleading the case of a woman charged with kidnapping her boss' 12-year-old son in a scheme to get $300,000 for an operation that would rid her husband of brain cancer.

The team from Colt's Neck High School in Monmouth County, which placed third statewide, sat as the jury. They issued a guilty verdict, but that does not affect the outcome, Clark and Rivera-Soto said.

The judges also do not know where each side was from until after the competition.

Rivera-Soto, who spent years working as an attorney for casinos and others locally, confessed a "soft spot in (his) heart for Atlantic County" after he and Clark issued their decision.

Holy Spirit teacher David Pfeifer, who has coached the school's mock trial team since 1983, said this year's team improved with each competition, including Wednesday's.

"This was a culmination of everything," he said afterward. "One of the things that was so good about this team was that they listened to all the judges had to say ... and critiqued each other, too."

This season also marked the first without attorney Daniel Murray, who died last summer of complications related to cancer. Murray, an assistant prosecutor in the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office for 26 years, so inspired the students that they dedicated each competition to him and kept a prayer card for him tucked nearby during oral arguments, Bishop said.

West Morris will be the first team from New Jersey in 25 years to compete at the National Mock Trial Championships, which previously did not accommodate students' religious weekend obligations, according to a statement from the New Jersey State Bar Association.

This year, nationals will run Wednesday May 6 through Saturday May 8 in Philadelphia instead of the Friday-Saturday schedules of past contests, according to the statement.

Contact Emily Previti:

609-272-7221

Andrew Bishop , of Absecon

Katie Gibbons, of Margate

Molly Gibbons, of Margate

Sonny Magalong, of Absecon

Nicole Rosenau, of Absecon

Kyle Messinger, of Egg Harbor City

Evanne Ellenberg, of Linwood

Logan Sykes, of Avalon

Kelly Griggs, of Galloway Township

Brenna Sooy, of Egg Harbor Township

Kassidy Reynolds, of Egg Harbor Township