Who was the classiest opposing team member?

[xavier86]

I want to talk about a timekeeper from the opposing team. During round 4 in the Milwaukee regionals, we played against Minnesota who represented the state. Their timekeeper, like all others, didn't display the time remaining when we were presenting our case. My team didn't really have a time keeper as during our practices we always were under.

Anyway, state closing arguments finished, then our defense closing arguments began and the U of M time keeper kept time for us with the little sign that counts the minutes down. I thought that was the classiest display of AMTA spirit ever. Given how this was round 4 and thus we couldn't give them AMTA spirit points, I think that makes his display of kindness even more authentic.

Does anyone here have a story of a particularly classy/kind member of opposing team?

[mtaddict]

I disagree--if you didn't have a time keeper and they didn't keep time for you throughout the entire round... I feel like that isn't classy.
Serving as a time keeper for half our case, I always kept time for EVERYTHING, and if a school doesn't have a time keeper--I think doing anything less than that is inexcusable.
Was this really something you had never seen before? Are you new to mock trial?

Not to rain on your "classiest" post... but just thought I'd throw that in there for you to consider.

[Nonsensical]

[quote author=mtaddict link=topic=3721.msg163027#msg163027 date=1203967779]
I disagree--if you didn't have a time keeper and they didn't keep time for you throughout the entire round... I feel like that isn't classy.
Serving as a time keeper for half our case, I always kept time for EVERYTHING, and if a school doesn't have a time keeper--I think doing anything less than that is inexcusable.
Was this really something you had never seen before? Are you new to mock trial?

Not to rain on your "classiest" post... but just thought I'd throw that in there for you to consider.
[/quote]

I agree; my team always keeps time for both sides. But I'll get back into the spirit of this post. My team had lost a couple of documents because in the round before the other team had taken them off the judge's table with their stuff and we didn't realize we were missing them. In the second round, opposing counsel let us use a couple of their extra copies.

[The Gelf]

Back in my timekeeping days, I always kept time for both sides if the other team asked me to, but for the life of me, I'll never understand why a team would want this. If you don't have a seventh person, why not just have whichever witness isn't testifying keep time?

I would never put my team's fate in the hands of somebody on the opposition, especially if I'm not sure how proficient that person is at keeping time. If that person docks some of your time or gives their own team more time, you have no recourse.

[mtaddict]

Ok, after being a jerk, I will throw something in on here.

Classy members--anyone who volunteers for a Bye Team.

They (the teams) suck on occasion (on occasion, they rock). We had some teams at the Louisville regional and the one day the Bye Team was ALL students from Ohio schools, save one.
This might not seem like a big deal... but to leave your team at a REGIONAL and go to the Bye team, when everyone was under death threat to provide bye members--I think it speaks alot for those schools that actually listened to that threat.
The reason that I drew attention to this specifically was because it was like all the "home teams" just... couldn't spare anyone. I think that is a problem.

So, here's to all you Bye buster team members... crack open a bud light.

[Alan S.]

[quote author=The Gelf link=topic=3721.msg163037#msg163037 date=1203970181]
Back in my timekeeping days, I always kept time for both sides if the other team asked me to, but for the life of me, I'll never understand why a team would want this. If you don't have a seventh person, why not just have whichever witness isn't testifying keep time?

I would never put my team's fate in the hands of somebody on the opposition, especially if I'm not sure how proficient that person is at keeping time. If that person docks some of your time or gives their own team more time, you have no recourse.
[/quote]

While that is true I would hope that most teams have more respect for each other than that. I do however agree that I still wouldn't really trust them.

[mtaddict]

[quote author=mtaddict link=topic=3721.msg163039#msg163039 date=1203970366]

So, here's to all you Bye buster team members... crack open a bud light.
[/quote]

Sheesh, or your favorite beverage of choice! (someone took exception to the mention of bud light)
I can't even be nice right!!!



Alan, I agree with you in hoping other teams have more respect that that....

[The Gelf]

[quote author=Alan S. link=topic=3721.msg163041#msg163041 date=1203970379]
While that is true I would hope that most teams have more respect for each other than that. I do however agree that I still wouldn't really trust them.
[/quote]

It's not even a matter of respect, trust or malice lots of the time. Often, timekeepers (especially inexperienced ones) make honest mistakes like forgetting to stop time during objections at certain points.

[mtaddict]

Oh ok, that I understand...
I think even experienced timekeepers do that on occasion. Heck, I've seen some fall asleep!

[xavier86]

[quote author=mtaddict link=topic=3721.msg163027#msg163027 date=1203967779]
I disagree--if you didn't have a time keeper and they didn't keep time for you throughout the entire round... I feel like that isn't classy.
Serving as a time keeper for half our case, I always kept time for EVERYTHING, and if a school doesn't have a time keeper--I think doing anything less than that is inexcusable.
Was this really something you had never seen before? Are you new to mock trial?

Not to rain on your "classiest" post... but just thought I'd throw that in there for you to consider.
[/quote]
Haha no problem. Yes pretty much my entire team save one lawyer was new to mock trial. Maybe it helped that this guy was just a pleasant person all around, as a witness and someone to talk to after the trial.

[Alan S.]

[quote author=The Gelf link=topic=3721.msg163046#msg163046 date=1203970824]
It's not even a matter of respect, trust or malice lots of the time. Often, timekeepers (especially inexperienced ones) make honest mistakes like forgetting to stop time during objections at certain points.
[/quote]

Good point.

[BenTucker]

^^^^^

I've done that before.

----------------------------------------

Classiest team? Wittenburg University. We had a scrimmage against them, and we had left out entire document briefcase during an invitational tournament. They copied off three new AMTA case packets, one for each attorney, and fitted each individual document with dust jackets.

[ShaphPrime]

Back in 2005 at the Loras Invitational, we hit Washburn in the first round. When we realized we had forgotten evidence stickers, they just gave us a sheet of theirs and said not to worry about it.

Nicest thing I have ever seen in competition.

[Bloch]

[quote author=xavier86 link=topic=3721.msg163004#msg163004 date=1203961885]
I want to talk about a timekeeper from the opposing team. During round 4 in the Milwaukee regionals, we played against Minnesota who represented the state. Their timekeeper, like all others, didn't display the time remaining when we were presenting our case. My team didn't really have a time keeper as during our practices we always were under.

Anyway, state closing arguments finished, then our defense closing arguments began and the U of M time keeper kept time for us with the little sign that counts the minutes down. I thought that was the classiest display of AMTA spirit ever. Given how this was round 4 and thus we couldn't give them AMTA spirit points, I think that makes his display of kindness even more authentic.

Does anyone here have a story of a particularly classy/kind member of opposing team?
[/quote]

I've been around a while so I have, if I think about it, maybe several thousand such stories. They are what make AMTA AMTA and why my pal Calkins still preaches "in mock trial, everyone's a winner."

Certainly an "over the top" winner for "classiest" was a terrific closer from Gonzaga and the team of Eagles from Eastern Washington that won the Burkhardt Team Spirit Award at the Pacific Northwest this month. In Round 3 on Saturday afternoon, the Eagles and Zags were paired in a trial where the presider was one who apparently limits her practice to the defense in capital cases. Needless to say, that presider's specialty is basis for my sincere admiration. She apparently introduced to AMTA trials some unexpected extras not all that different from what I have done to become AMTA's "most hated presider."

Word is that the Eagles' fine closer was being peppered with sua sponte objections from the bench. The Zags' closer rose, and, in what I see as fairly unique classiness, sought to correct the Bench in protection of her worthy opposing counsel. If that did not reflect professional collegiality largely unknown to too much of the real Bar, I don't know what does.

But that is not the end of my nomination for "classiest." I have always served as the Captain's Meeting moderator of the Pacific Northwest and therefore part of my job was to collect and tabulate the Team Spirit ballots at Round 4 Captain's.

With the whirlwind of the "news on one presider" filling the field, I read many Team Spirit comments commending the Eagles. In fact, our dear friends from EWU remarkably outscored even the Golden Bears of Cal who are perpetual odds-on favorites for all of AMTA's Team Spirit awards. But what touched me most among all of those ballots (that had obviously been obediently pinned to the freshmen's shorts) was that of the victoriously classy Eagles that begged, pleaded, implored that the Burkhardt Award instead go to the Zags. Sorry, beloved Eagles! AMTA does not authorize me to grant the most noble request.

A moral to my story: None should define "classiest" until one visits the Pacific Northwest Regional Qualifier. Year after year, the real Team Spirit dominates.

[Bloch]

Oh, shoot! I really like this thread. So let me add what I still remember so vividly about the Howard University team at the 11th National's Silver Tournament in 1995. In one of the early glimmers of Howard's impact on the gentility of AMTA, I still have warm memories that make all I associate with Howard - like Olu, Felicia and so many others - individual stand outs.

The 11th was my third year as National Tournament Director. Hamline University hosted Silver for the first time and it was the first year that Silver achievements advanced teams to Gold. We announced that the Final Trial would be contested between the wonderful old program at Concordia College and the new or fairly new program at Howard. We proceeded from the banquet hall a bit across campus to Hamline Law's impressive courtroom. Once I arrived at Hamline Law, my dear friend, then Dean Tom Williams of the University of Cincinnati, approached me and reported that there was an error in tabulating (despite three adders) that would put the Bearcats in the Final Trial. Always classy himself, the Dean asked for a few minutes to address his team. He returned asking that I correct the error and replace the Howard team with the Cincinnati team.

One of the reasons that I was National Tournament Director was that I had many years in debate tabrooms. In debate, discovery of such an error was always a vitriolic tragedy. (I recall once doing a u-turn and driving about 60 miles back to Athens, Georgia in order to report that a team of Samford Bulldogs I coached got screwed out of an elim round slot by a tab error just before the NDT qualifier! [I can be vitriolic!])

So, at Hamline, I was easily picturing in my mind a herd of Bison - strangers to me at the time - trampling the National Tournament Director. But, that was why AMTA, sometimes in that era, reimbursed the NDT for some of his expenses. It was my duty and I approached Professor Debyii Thomas with the determinative ballot showing the error. Professor Thomas took about one second to look at the ballot and then guided her wonderful team from the Finial Trial courtroom without a peep from a one of them. Fortunately, we had introduced the All-American Honors Trials that season and found room in the trial for representatives of what I now see as a typically classy Howard team.

That type of classy behavior eventually reaps its rewards. I recall a few years later - maybe the 13th National where Howard won both Silver and Gold - that there became as heated an issue as I have ever seen in AMTA. A point penalty was imposed when a Howard captain appeared on time at a Captain's Meeting in the Polk County Courthouse but the Howard captain had not initialed a check-in board used by the moderator. The penalty imposed determined a ballot. There was loud discord in the tabroom. There was a more private conversation just outside the tabroom that included tearful reports of resignations by some of AMTA's true leaders.

Before all that and as tempers flared, I happened upon Professor Thomas just as the team was approaching its next courtroom. I told Coach Thomas to please address her team, let them know that I was addressing the penalty issue and that I hoped they'd erase it from their minds, perform as only Howard could and let me do what was needed so that AMTA would not be a vehicle of injustice. The penalty was eventually erased.

For several years, the Howard contingents used "the Silver Slingshot" to Gold often attended by their University's top administrators. I always enjoyed sharing my image of Howard "through Hamline-colored glasses" with those devoted administrators.

I still have no example of Howard University that does not exude class.

[Bloch]

I just came across my PNWRQ stuff. The classy closer for Gonzaga was Sofia Noorani. Here is what the Eastern Washington team wrote on the TSOA Ballot:

Team K (GU) deserves the Spirit of AMTA as ... in round 3 ... they stood up for fairness in sincerity both inthe round and outside of the round. Never have we seen a team act in such a supportive way. Please give them this award; we support them immensely!