Mock Trial Is For Real

Mock Trial, simply by its name, sounds like a fake. It's not.

Just ask Jim Efting, middle school mock trial coach for the past 25 years at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Catholic schools -- 15 years at St. Pius X and the past 10 years at Regis Middle School. (See today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.)

Jim's teams have won a dozen state championships and dozens of other accolades. Often he has three teams of 10 students each going at the same time. In a few years, a couple of the teams have made it to the state tournament and even the "Final Four."

In fact, at least one team Jim has coached has made the "Final Four" of the state tournament every year since 1992. That's while competing against upwards of 200 teams in the state.

"To me," Jim says, "that says we've got hard working kids who don't want to say, 'We didn't get to the Final Four. We're going to keep that tradition going."

As with anything that can take 200 hours out of a busy schedule while teaching, spending time with his wife and raising four children including twins who are in kindergarten, Jim has considered resigning as mock trial coach. It's not that he doesn't love it, it's just that life in general can keep you pretty busy.

Then, Jim hears from a young student who wants to follow an older brother or sister on the team. Or a parent comes up and thanks him for how studying for mock trial  has helped her daughter  or son appreciate the equation that hard work equals success. Or, like last December, more than 300 former students and parents hold a surprise gathering to honor Jim and give his children $28,000 in college scholarship money.

You can't walk away from that.

For Jim, a 1976 graduate of Waterloo Columbus (Catholic) in his native community, it's similar to teaching at a Catholic school.

"Late, in the summer of 1985, I saw an opening here (in Cedar Rapids) at St. Pius," he said. "Oh, man, I wasn't sure I wanted to teach at a Catholic school. I knew what they paid."

So, he planned to teach for a couple of years, then move on to "make big money" in the public schools. But, it didn't turn out that way.

"I just got hooked," Jim says. "The kids were so good. I had a fantastic group of kids. It got me thinking, well, it's not all about money."

Jim also had this fantasy -- to be an attorney.

"LA Law was popular on TV at the time," he says. "I thought it would be fun to have a law  team. I was always interested in that."

When he suggested forming a mock trial team to Tim Semelroth, a rather precocious eighth-grader who breezed through his lessons rather quickly, Tim bit. Tim bit so hard  he participated in mock trial through high school and college, became an attorney and today coaches Cedar Rapids metro teams -- they go by the name Robins Mock Trial -- that have won at the state level, including this year.

Mock trial may be a simulation of what actually happens in a courtroom. But, to those who coach and participate, it can lead to real life rewards.