Early in the morning of February 21st, 2026, teams from all over the Clackamas region gathered in Oregon City to compete in the High School Mock Trial Regional competition. 15 teams from schools such as West Linn, Sherwood, OES, Lake Oswego, Village Home, and Riverdale battled it out to see what 3 teams would be making it to the Oregon state competition.
Among them was Jesuit High School, a team whose expectations were high after taking 1st place and going undefeated in the Duckpond competition the month prior. Jesuit sent a total of 3 teams to the competition, Gold, Black, and Green, led by Dr. Exley and Mr. Shoultz. These teams were looking to continue the winning streak from last year, as last year’s Gold Team went undefeated and took 1st place in regionals, advancing to state.
The teams gathered at the Clackamas County Courthouse at around 8am, ready to start their first trials for the day.
Claire Steyskal, senior captain of the gold team, detailed the anticipation before the first trial.
“I think we were all a little nervous. Our goal wasn’t to just make it to state, it was to make it to state and win state, so we needed to perform to the best of our abilities at regionals to make sure we got there.”
The first trial started promptly at 9am, with Jesuit Gold going against Riverdale White, Jesuit Black competing against Sherwood Silver, and Jesuit Green going against West Linn Black.
While most of the trials ran very smoothly, 10 minutes into Jesuit Green’s round, Dr. Exley got a text concerning the Bye Buster team.
For those unfamiliar with the term Bye Buster, as there was an uneven number of teams in the regional competition, there was a need for another team made up of students who weren’t competing so that everyone had an equal chance and an even number of trials.
“They asked if we could help organize a Bye Buster team,” said Exley. “So I left the round I was watching, ran over to the green team’s courtroom, grabbed four kids and told them, surprise, you’re about to compete right now! Sounds like they did a great job”
After a hectic start to Jesuit Green’s first trial, all 3 teams finished on time and completed the round, taking a quick lunch break and preparing for the next one. Those teams who were on Prosecution for the first round would now switch to Defense, and vice versa, meaning Round 2 was filled with all new possibilities and things that could happen.
Scoring would not come out until after the day was over, meaning teams were left not knowing whether they won or lost the first round. In round 2, Jesuit Gold went against Riverdale’s other team, Riverdale Blue, Jesuit Black competed against Sherwood Crimson, and Jesuit Green went against West Linn Gold.
These trials were filled with objection battles, character witnesses, and influential speeches, so much so that the rounds went a little long and the whole courthouse ended up behind schedule.
This meant that the last round had some time constraint, as the Clackamas County Courthouse electronically locked its doors at 5pm sharp and it was required that teams vacated by then. Many teams didn’t know if this meant shortening their material or keeping objections to a minimum, so they went into the last round blind and wondering if anything would change.
Matchups were decided and the final trial started a little after 3. Jesuit Gold would be competing against previous state qualifier Village Home, Jesuit Black would be against West Linn Black, and Jesuit Green went full circle and competed against the Bye Buster.
Jesuit Black’s trial had an interesting start as there was a misunderstanding with the organization and no Judge showed up to preside over their trial. Usually there would be a Judge and 2 jurors providing 3 ballots, but with this mixup there would only be 2 jurors giving ballots and the third ballot would be an average of those two actual ballots.
This switch up caused Jesuit Black to start even later when they were already on a time crunch, meaning in order to finish they unfortunately had to cut speeches and some of their crosses meaning it wasn’t as full of a trial as others.
In the end, everyone finished their trials and waited for the results to come out at 6pm.
To break scoring down, each trial has 2 jurors and 1 judge that each provides 1 ballot meaning there are a total of 3 ballots per round. Either team has the opportunity to win a ballot, and how many ballots you win basically determines whether or not you make it to state.
As the results came in, it was learned that Jesuit Gold earned all 3 ballots every trial, meaning they went 9-0, earned first place in regionals, and were advancing to state. 2nd and 3rd place were both teams from West Linn, with them each going 7-2 for ballots.
Although Jesuit Black and Green didn’t make it to state, both teams performed exceptionally well and had an amazing mock trial season.
The Oregon Mock Trial State Championship Competition takes place March 14th-15th, and Regional champs, Jesuit Gold, is ready to take them head on.
