Vehicular assault, texting and driving and teenagers and complexity: these are the topics and crimes that were the center of Washington State’s high school mock trial case for the 2025-2026 school year. For the past five months, UPrep’s mock trial team has been constructing legal arguments, creating key witness characters and learning every detail of this fictional legal case.
On March 22, they competed in the state tournament at the Pierce County District Courthouse, Tacoma, and won 1st place, sending them to the National High School Mock Trial Championship in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 7 through 9.
Senior and co-captain of the varsity team, Keston Gruhl, has been on the team since his freshman year. He and the team have gone to the state every year, but it was only last year that they won third place, giving Gruhl hope for this year’s team.
“It was really surreal, because in that moment, like just so many years of meeting every Sunday and all that hard work and practice culminating into that final moment of learning that your team made the final round,” Gruhl said. “Being in that final room, being presided over by a Washington Supreme Court justice with all the cameras everywhere… I’m like, wow, I’m in the final round that will be documented and looked at by other teams for years.”
The Washington State case this year was Judge Lizanne Padula’s first case, and she made it about texting and driving. According to Gruhl, she wanted to make an impact through her cases as opposed to the more obscure cases in past years.
“Especially as a prosecuting attorney, it was interesting because I’m prosecuting this kid who looked down at their phone for like, a couple of seconds, which is something that I’ve done before,” Gruhl said. “You kind of classify ordinary negligence versus recklessness. I mean, my entire case was trying to prove that looking down at your phone while going 35 miles an hour through an intersection is just reckless, and it has a disregard for the safety of others.”
In mock trial, teams construct legal arguments for both the defense and the prosecution of the assigned case, and in competition they are assigned only one side to compete with. In the final round, UPrep’s prosecution competed against Franklin High School’s defense attorneys.
Both teams prepare witnesses for both the defense and prosecution, and are cross and direct examined by attorneys on both sides.
Junior Jordan Gruhl is a witness for the defense, Riley Tirant, a collision reconstructionist for the crime scene.
“I was interested in being a witness from the start,” Gruhl said. “I have enjoyed the level of involvement with legal stuff, as opposed to the amount of acting that I’m doing, because being a witness is also about acting. I think there’s a good balance between the two for me. I think it’s been just generally really fun.”
While both sides had a collision reconstructionist witness, Jordan Gruhl’s role was slightly different. Because the defense goes second in the trial, Jordan Gruhl got to provide his own theory about the crash while also debunking what the previous collision reconstructionist said only minutes before.
“I think for me specifically, there was a lot of just tightening up my character, making sure I knew every word in the witness statement by heart,” Gruhl said. “Not only are you sort of putting on a performance during your direct examination, because it’s a thing you’ve kind of prepared beforehand, but you also have to know your character and know all the facts of what your character saw and did and knows to be able to withstand the crossing attorney on the other side.”
Now that the state tournament is over, the team begins to prepare for nationals.
“We just got our case [Wednesday] for nationals,” Jordan Gruhl said. “It’s a new case. So we read through it, and we figure out all the things we’re going to be doing. It’s just an accelerated version of what we did in five months, but in one month… It’s going to be a lot of work, but I think it’s really going to pay off. And I’m really excited to be able to find a new character to pour myself into.”
Gruhl feels confident about the team, with many being longtime members and seniors.
“We have pretty much all of April to prep it before we’re competing,” Keston Gruhl said. It’s going to be difficult, but I think our team’s ready. I think we have what it takes. Washington state is one of the most competitive states in the United States for high school mock trial, and so it’ll just be about hunkering down, focusing and just giving it our all in these next couple of weeks.”
