GW’s Geography Bowl and Mock Trial teams both found success at their respective competitions last month.
The Geography Bowl team finished in second place at the World Geography Bowl in San Francisco April 18, having previously won the Mid-Atlantic regional qualifier earlier this year.
GW’s undergraduate Mock Trial team finished third in its division at the national tournament held at Stetson Law School in St. Petersburg, Fla., from April 13 to 15.
The Geography Bowl team, comprised of both graduate and undergraduate students, answered individual and team questions about subjects like mapping techniques, local geography and current events. Wesley Reisser, a graduate student studying geography, received the event’s MVP award for having the highest individual score.
“We had an experienced team and we thought we had a good chance of winning it all,” said the team’s coach, Marie Price, who also serves as chair of the geography department at GW. “We fought hard and came up just a little short.”
This is the fourth consecutive year GW has made it to the national competition for geography. GW students made up the entirety of the Mid-Atlantic team, as opposed to the other regions which were composed of individuals from multiple schools. The Middle States team, which took first place in the event, had students from colleges in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
“We’re a well-bonded, tightknit group of students, and we work really hard together every week,” Reisser said.
Like the geography students, the Mock Trial team qualified for the national competition by first competing at the regional level – the 11th straight year that GW has done so.
The team had to argue for both the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s side of a fictional case set in the state of “Midlands.” The case involved a lawsuit brought by the parents of a teenager who had been killed by the police while robbing a drugstore.
“The trials that go on at these competitions are a lot like the ones that go on in an actual courtroom,” senior Daniel Brozovic said.
Both Brozovic and senior Jeff Goodman received individual accolades for their efforts at the tournament. Brozovic won two All-American honors as a witness, and Goodman won two as an attorney. Brozovic, however, credited the whole team for its success.
“Everyone put in an incredible amount of work, close to forty hours a week to prepare for nationals, he said. “(The team) showed an amazing amount of dedication.”
