Written by Brennan Berryhill
Working 40 hours a week, taking night classes, attending social functions, and expanding a professional network is more than enough for most students who join the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program (WHIP), but six dedicated members of the Hillsdale College Mock Trial (HCMT) team decided they also wanted to compete at one of the most difficult invitational tournaments.
HCMT is competitive on the national circuit. It is currently ranked among the top 15 programs in the country, and in 2024, the team competed in the American Mock Trial Association National Championship Final Round. For any program to maintain this level of success, its members need to stay on top of their work and put in countless hours of practice. So you can imagine the concern from Program Director Jonathan Church, ’17, when he found out that six HCMT members (a fifth of the entire program) were going on WHIP for the fall 2025 semester.
Traditionally, HCMT members that go to D.C. each semester take time off from Mock Trial because WHIP is demanding. It’s extremely difficult to practice and compete with a team housed back on campus. With such a large contingent of students departing for the fall, full of talented upperclassmen that would be integral to the team’s success in the competitive spring season, Church knew it would have to be an unorthodox semester.
And so, the “D.C. Team” was born. Patrick McDonald, ’26, and Elizabeth Gaines, ’27, captained the squad. The other four members were Hershey Athysivam, ’27, Ella Lovins, ’27, Jon Hovance, ’27, and Miriam Ahern, ’27. Their goal was to take on the Great American Mock Trial Invitational (GAMTI) in early December 2025, one of the most difficult fall competitions, with the help of four other experienced competitors in Hillsdale who would fly out to join them.
From the start, the team had to use some ingenuity to make things work. Church created a class for the D.C. team, condensing the content into a two-hour practice session on Tuesday nights. The first couple of weeks, the team met with Coach Church via Zoom to cover the curriculum, and the second half of the semester, the captains led sessions to memorize and practice their material.
It was a taxing commitment. Lovins said she returned from work at 6:45, and practice started at 7:00, so the team started making microwave popcorn as a snack to get through practice. “Everyone had a corner where they paced and practiced,” Lovins said about practice in her tiny apartment. “Hershey curled up in the chair, Jon gave his closing argument to the wall, Elizabeth delivered her opening statements to the front door. Patrick or Jon would be outside pacing around and memorizing cross-examinations. You couldn’t project full volume or nobody else would be able to do their stuff.”
Balance wasn’t a word the team used to describe their experience. “There really was no balance,” Gaines said. “We just chose to do everything. I loved Mock Trial and I also wanted to get as much as I could out of WHIP, so I did everything I could at all hours of the day.” Hovance said he worked 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day — “that was the balance.” The experience was a lesson in time management. Ahern said she had to learn to prioritize. “With Mock Trial, we really wanted it,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we had our classes, we had our work, and we got those done.” With so little time available, every second of practice mattered.
The schedule only ramped up in the weeks leading up to the tournament. Ahern said, “We had a really intense week leading up to GAMTI. We were working full time, writing papers, and studying for finals the next week. Every single night we either had two-and-a-half to four hours of classes or three hours of practice—just a lot of work around the clock. We really pulled together as a team that week.”
On Friday night, the day before the tournament, the six members of the D.C. team had a full day of work, went to the WHIP Christmas party with their luggage, got picked up halfway through by Coach Church and the four competitors from the Hillsdale campus, went to the tournament hotel, and practiced for competition the next morning. Things didn’t get easier on the back end either. After their weekend of competition, they had to go back and take their final exams on Monday.
It was in the middle of this hurricane that the D.C. team competed at GAMTI and emerged as one of the tournament’s ten “Outstanding Trial Teams.” They faced tough competition from Emory University, the University of Florida, Patrick Henry College, and the University of Michigan in their four rounds. Ahern felt that the team was “locked in at the GAMTI tournament. It was fantastic: we had quality competition, a great team, and had really put in a lot of work in the weeks leading up to it.”
After giving it their all for two days, the team sat in closing ceremonies with their suitcases, and in the words of Gaines, “in a fog of exhaustion.” The tournament hosts started rattling off the names of the teams who placed tenth, then ninth, then eighth place. At this point, many members of the team thought they weren’t going to place. Then, suddenly, they heard “Hillsdale College.” They placed sixth overall, with a record of seven judge ballots won, four ballots lost, and one ballot tied. McDonald took home both an outstanding attorney and witness award.
Gaines was so shocked that McDonald had to come up and tell her they needed to go accept the trophy. She said she “just slapped my hand over my mouth—clinging onto the trophy for dear life. The whole group just spontaneously fell into a group hug, clinging onto each other. It was very emotional.” In the few years HCMT has attended this invitational tournament, this is its best result. Lovins said, “We had worked so hard. We had really sacrificed things to make Mock Trial work on WHIP, so to have it pay off was worth it.”
Looking back on the experience, Gaines said she was extremely appreciative of the College, of Coach Church, and of the competitors who were flexible with their practice schedules and flew down to compete with them at the tournament. Hovance was thankful for the chance to stay involved, even if it was only competing at one tournament during the fall. Lovins said it was the semester that worked her the hardest and grew her the most, and she would absolutely go back in time to do it all again. Ahern thought the WHIP semester was a great experience. She loved having a 9-5 job and long-form, socratic-style classes in the evening. “Having a taste of life after graduation while still having the Hillsdale community there in D.C. to come back to was really rewarding.” She said she learned an incredible amount from doing both Mock Trial and WHIP.
The job is far from done, though. Coach Church said it was “very impressive they could dedicate their time and off-night to a fourth class, and be able to compete at GAMTI.” However, he acknowledged it was not like a normal Mock Trial semester, and they weren’t able to go through the typical fall development track. The spring is competitive season for Mock Trial, and these efforts in the fall are all aimed at developing the strongest A, B, and C teams possible when the elimination tournaments come. Still, without the efforts of the D.C. team, Church said the team wouldn’t have been prepared to compete at the highest level in the spring. How the season unfolds remains to be seen.
Will something like this happen again? Probably not. Gaines said, “I’m proud of it. It does feel unrepeatable in a way.” Lovins agreed. “We captured lightning in a bottle,” she said. What was once a joke—“let’s have a D.C. team!”—became a reality because six Hillsdale students were willing to dream and put in the work to make it a reality.
Now back on campus, the former D.C. team continues to apply all the lessons they learned from their time away, whether that’s in competition or school work. One thing is certain—WHIP was an experience they will never forget.
Brennan Berryhill, ’27, hails from Denver, Colorado, and when he isn’t writing or obsessively taking notes, you can find him playing trombone, debating, or nerding out over football.
Published in February 2026
