The Furman mock trial team didn\u2019t fulfill its dream of winning the American Mock Trial Association national championship over the weekend, but in pretty much every other way the University\u2019s inaugural foray into hosting the huge event was a rousing success.<\/p>\n
Yale University, the 2015 runner-up, defeated the University of Virginia on Sunday evening in the final round of the Bell Tower Championship<\/a> at the Younts Conference Center to capture its first national title. The Bulldogs and Cavaliers emerged from a pair of 24-team divisions that began competing on Friday, but neither knew they had made the title match until it was announced at the awards ceremony at Timmons Arena on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Yale\u2019s Allison Durkin, a senior from Pittston City, Pa., said the elation at learning she and her teammates had advanced was quickly replaced by a determination to not come up short again a year after coming in second to Harvard.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just sitting there holding our breath the whole time,\u201d she said. \u201cLast year we went undefeated before the final round, and that took our breath away. This year we had this sense that it wasn\u2019t enough just to get there. We really wanted to win the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Furman, competing in its 20th<\/sup> consecutive national tournament, earned honorable mention honors after finishing 11th<\/sup> in its division. The Paladins got off to a hot start before running into trouble on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cWe won all of our ballots against Patrick Henry College, so we were 5-0 on Friday night. Then we had another really strong round on Saturday morning against George Washington. We won four out of the five ballots there,\u201d said Furman team director and tournament organizer Glen Halva-Neubauer, Ph.D.\u00a0 \u201cWe were really rockin\u2019 and rollin\u2019 and we just got blitzed, 0-5, against Georgia Tech on Saturday afternoon, and then we won one out of four against UVA on Sunday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n The Paladins could have knocked Virginia out of the final with a stronger performance, but as it was they finished 10-10 on their 20 ballots. Georgia Tech took third overall.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got an honorable mention, which I\u2019m very proud of,\u201d Halva-Neubauer said. \u201cI think the students fought their hearts out, but they had two really spectacular teams (in their way).\u201d<\/p>\n Ever since Furman was awarded the tournament last year, Halva-Neubauer has worked feverishly to land sponsors, raise money, secure judges and organize the daunting logistics required to host approximately 500 student competitors from 48 schools in the smallest city to ever serve as the event\u2019s home. All total, more than a thousand people descended on Greenville, and perhaps the highest hurdle was scheduling the use of multiple sites for the mock trials because nowhere in Greenville has enough courthouses, 24, under one roof.<\/p>\n Teams moved between the Greenville County, the Greenville Municipal and the Haynsworth Federal courthouses as well as the Furman campus in \u201ccourtrooms\u201d constructed by Tony Whitaker and Wayne Merrill of the University carpentry shop.<\/p>\n \u201cThere aren\u2019t 24 courtrooms in Greenville County, period. We used every courtroom we could get our hands on that wasn\u2019t Lilliputian sized. So we had to come to campus if we were going to host this,\u201d Halva-Neubauer said.<\/p>\n Yale\u2019s Durkin said things went off without a hitch.<\/p>\n \u201cThe logistics were very well planned out and very well executed, so having multiple sites was no issue at all,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had one round on Furman\u2019s campus where the backdrop was this beautiful lake. I\u2019ve run tournaments here at Yale, and I understand how difficult it is to make sure things are running that smoothly \u2026 Knowing the Furman program and their reputation for running great tournaments, I was expecting it to be run well and I wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n Halva-Neubauer also managed to land a record number of volunteer judges, approximately 300 that allowed for five per round, and Durkin thinks that added a new level of legitimacy to the scoring.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s never been done before so far as I know. Usually the most that you\u2019ll see is three judges per round, but you\u2019re only guaranteed two judges per round at any tournament. So to have five judges judging what is a subjective activity gives you a lot more confidence that you have the right outcome,\u201d she said. \u201cIt gives you more confidence that if you put on a good performance, people will know.\u201d<\/p>\n