In the late 1990s, I walked away from Mock Trial in large part due to the arbitrary nature of the judging in our competitions. I’ll write more about that specifically in another entry, but the gist is that we would handily beat another team in my estimation, but the result would be a loss and a completely insufficient explanation. My team would execute as coached, and then we would lose despite the other team having stepped in a number of traps along the way. I had and have theories about why this sort of thing happens (not conspiracy theories, mind you, just judges being impressed by the “wrong” things and ignoring important things), but it wouldn’t change how I felt on the ride home. What can I tell a team that deserved to win, but didn’t, other than “You was robbed!” The primary reason for the insufficient explanation is that according to the state bar foundation’s rules, they do not release the scores, instead they just announce a winner.
After four years away from it, I was enticed to return and dealt with that frustration from time to time, though usually within a margin of error, meaning that I could at least conceive of a subjective difference of opinion that would get two judges to perceive the results differently. In the late 2000s, I had a very strong team, and we made it to the county finals. By this point, the frustrations of these arbitrary decisions had risen again and I was a bit on edge about them. As the county final unfolded, I couldn’t have imagined a better performance by my team, and frankly, our opponent was not having a good night. In every conceivable way, my team was crushing the competition.
You could feel it in the room. If there were a live scoreboard and I were allowed to communicate with my team, I might have told them to let off the gas; it was that bad. But my team kept the pressure on, and I sidled up to my attorney coach and I muttered, “If the other team wins, I will never do this again.”
When the judges read out the decision — that our opponent had indeed won — I burst out with a regrettable, “WHAT?!?” I wasn’t the only person in shock. If I remember correctly, the opposing coach approached me and shrugged their shoulders, more or less apologizing for the win. I didn’t announce my second retirement to the students right away, because I didn’t want it to be about me, and instead railed against the ignorance of the judges and the unfairness of a competition where we don’t get to see the scores.
The next day I received an email from the county coordinator asking me to call her on a matter of urgency. I called and she sheepishly told me that the judges had made an adding error, and that in fact, Hillsborough were the county champions. I give her a ton of credit admitting this and not just burying the evidence, which would have been a lot easier. And I can’t imagine how awful the phone call to the other team had to be for her.
In all subsequent Somerset County competitions, they do not announce the winner the same night. We have to wait until the next day, sometimes well into the afternoon to find out who won.
I get why they want to double and triple check the scores so that this sort of thing never happens again, but it really shouldn’t be that difficult to add up two columns of numbers to ensure accuracy. I will admit that knowing that you’re not going to find out that night has an up side. It prevents too much analysis from the coaches (if you’ve lost and are eliminated for the year, why dwell on what they did wrong?), and to some extent it keeps the focus off the approval of the judges instead of the intrinsic motivation of just doing some pretty impressive mental gymnastics and performing. The next day, however, is always fraught with the stress of watching the inbox for the message, which sometimes doesn’t come until the afternoon. I gather the other counties have not had this issue (or perhaps if they’ve messed up the addition, maybe they buried the story?).
Fenster on Education 