'Cinderella story': Stetson University moot court team on to nationals in its first year

A few months ago, Stetson University’s undergraduate moot court program barely existed. Now, its students have beaten teams from three of the top 10 programs in the country and are heading to a national competition.

While Stetson has a well-known law program and competitive graduate moot court team, 16-year-old freshman Tristyn Rampersad and pre-law program Chair Sven Smith deserve much of the credit for getting the team started.

As a prospective student, Rampersad approached Smith about creating a moot court program if the teen decided to attend the DeLand school, and the rest is history.

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"We're just stoked to be there. I'm stoked that the team is there. I'm so happy for the opportunity and the experience that they get and what they can put on the resume when they’re applying to law schools," Smith said of the impending national competition, calling his team's journey a "Cinderella story."

Similar to mock trial, moot court is a competition in which students participate in simulated appellate advocacy, using previous cases to construct arguments to present to a panel of judges. More than 500 teams across the country have competed in regional competitions in previous years, according to the American Moot Court Association.

Stetson joins competitive moot court regional tournament at last minute

After starting the team at Stetson with Rampersad — whom Smith calls a “phenom” — he recruited more students, who had been working many hours a week on their arguments. The team had no intention of competing this year, only planning to scrimmage since it was brand new.

But that was before they got a call in early November saying a team had dropped out of the South Atlantic Regional competition taking place at the University of Central Florida in Orlando the very next day.

Rampersad and teammate Colin Snyder, a senior, stepped up to the plate, preparing all evening and the next morning.

“UCF just so happens to be one of the best programs in the country for moot court,” Smith said. “They have a whole wing of a downtown building that's just called the ‘Moot Court’ area. It's pretty intense.”

Smith tried to motivate his team by showing them a clip from the 1986 film “Hoosiers,” where a small-town Indiana high school basketball team heads to the state championship.

In the scene, the coach, played by Gene Hackman, measures from the rim to the floor and the free-throw line to the baseline to show the team that it’s the same measurements as their gym.

“I was just telling them you can construct the same exact argument in either place and do just as well,” Smith said. “It doesn't matter where you're going to argue. You could be at the Taj Mahal. You're still going to be making the exact same argument, and it's going to be good. It's going to be impressive.”

Snyder says he’s a confident person and had a feeling that they would advance once they made it to the regional competition.

“It was intimidating at first, but I had been in big competitions before,” he said, noting that Smith’s speech encouraged him to treat it like they were in their own classroom.

Rampersad, who had done moot court in high school, trusted the team even if they didn’t have as much experience at the college level yet.

“I personally just have this philosophy of I'm going to try every opportunity that comes my way no matter how I might feel or if I'm prepared for it or not, or how much it scares me,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I didn't throw away the shot that we got to actually compete in this tournament.”

Stetson students beat multiple nationally ranked programs to earn nationals bid

Sixteen out of 30 teams advanced to the second day of the tournament, and Rampersad and Snyder were ranked 13. They kept getting better, though, beating teams from the United States Air Force Academy, ranked ninth in the country by AMCA; University of Central Florida, ranked fourth; and University of Chicago, the nation’s top program.

The Stetson duo ultimately nabbed second place and earned a bid to the AMCA National Tournament that takes place Jan. 14 and 15 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

"It's just a testament to the hard work we put in and the fact that the Stetson pre-law program itself is just extremely beneficial to getting you to that level where you can have the instruction and teaching necessary to have those skills,” Rampersad said.

Snyder also credited Smith for teaching him so much and Stetson President Christopher Roellke for his “tremendous support” of the program. He said moot court has helped with developing legal reasoning skills, delivering oral arguments, thinking on his feet and conversing with judges.

Heading into the national competition, senior Camilo Arado Lilleslatten will fill in for Snyder, who can’t attend.

All three students are in Stetson’s pre-law program and intend to become attorneys.

Lilleslatten, who lives on Sanibel Island off the coast of Fort Myers, has been preparing while also tending to needs at home, where the entire downstairs of his house was wiped out by Hurricane Ian a few months ago.

In his last semester, he had no intention of letting the storm derail him.

“Honestly the schoolwork and all the preparation for moot court and things like that, it's given me a distraction away from all the worries at home,” he said. “It's been nice to have that kind of as an outlet for myself and then it's been fun as well.”

Lilleslatten thinks the national competition will be challenging but says they’re going with the intention to win, and Rampersad and Snyder are also confident they’ll go far.

To prepare, the team has been meeting online and in person frequently to work on arguments and answering judges’ questions.

Contact reporter Danielle Johnson at djohnson@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Stetson University moot court team wins bid to national competition