Once, there was an empty courtroom, silent and dark. No judge sat at the bench, no witnesses at the stand, no students stood to make their case for the judge. Now, that empty courtroom will be filled with students sitting at the long desk in swivel chairs, determined to win the trial they will soon put on for the judge.

These students are involved in Mock Trial, an extracurricular activity that almost died out this year.

Before nearly losing Mock Trial, Neil Chalmers, Albert Lea High School teacher and past Mock Trial coach, decided to come back and coach the much-loved activity.

“You can’t take a program like that and just let it die off,” Chalmers said.

Mock Trial is an extracurricular activity that uses made-up courtroom cases, whether civil or criminal, and students stand before a judge as lawyers or witnesses and put on a trial to receive points. There are three witnesses on each team, the plaintiff and the defense, with a corresponding lawyer. Each witness has an affidavit in the case, a retelling of their story for what happened in the case. The trial consists of direct and cross examinations of the witnesses, when each team has a turn to question them about the case, and opening statements and closing arguments, when each team can summarize their case in a nutshell. The team receiving the most points for their conduct and presentation wins the trial.

“Mock Trial is a combination of speech, theater, and debate all rolled into one,” Chalmers said.

And it was hard for him to let that go. Last year, at the end of the 2012-13 season, Chalmers decided he needed to quit coaching Mock Trial because of personal reasons. Normally, Mock Trial runs from Monday through Friday, for at least two to three hours after school. The time that Mock Trial takes couldn’t fit with his schedule.

Determined to keep the activity going, Tyler Egge, a senior at Albert Lea High School, searched and searched for a new Mock Trial coach, but nobody stepped up to take the position. The deadline to have a new coach drew closer, and a coach still hadn’t been found.

“Our hopes just kind of went down the tubes,” Egge said.

Then, when all Mock Trial participants’ hopes were depleted, Chalmers rose up and rescued the activity from the brink of extinction, deciding to come back and coach for one more year. Now instead of an empty courtroom, students will take their places in the swivel chairs behind the long desks and a judge will sit at his bench to oversee the trial of the Mock Trial team.

“I didn’t really believe it, actually,” said Carol Lein, a senior at Albert Lea High School and a long-time participant of Mock Trial.

Lein has been in Mock Trial since she was in eighth grade. Since it’s her senior year, she wanted to have just one last year of Mock Trial. Now that it’s here, she said she’d try her hardest to make this year the best year possible.

“It’s our last shot at it,” Lein said.

Like these two students, Mock Trial is important to Chalmers. To coach the program this year, he said he had to give up time with family, but as he also pointed out, every good thing requires some sacrifices.

Students need to make some sacrifices as well. When they sign up for Mock Trial, they have to spend a lot of time working on the case, writing questions for witnesses and opening statements and closing arguments to get ready for the trial. They need to work hard on the case, lose sleep for early bus rides and miss school days all in the name of Mock Trial.

“The students are basically signing up for another class,” Chalmers said.

Starting in the 2009-10 season, because of all the students’ hard work, Albert Lea’s Mock Trial team qualified for the state competition three years in a row and, naturally, it’s the goal of this year’s team to make it to that competition.

“We have to work our butts off,” Egge said.

But for students in Mock Trial, it’s completely worth it. Mock Trial isn’t just about working on the case. It’s also about hanging out with people who share the same interests. Egge said since students in Mock Trial spend so much time together at the practices, they become like a little family.

Instead of an empty courtroom this year, students in Mock Trial will have the opportunity to sit in those swivel chairs and make their case to the judge, doing their best to score higher in the competition. And they’re having fun all the way.

“It’s like an early Christmas present,” Egge said.