Paideia’s competitive academic teams have had a very successful start to the new year. Model UN (MUN) and Mock Trial have both performed well at major tournaments in February after months of preparation. 

Mock Trial had the first competition of the school year on Saturday, Feb. 10 at the regional Mock Trial competition. For the first time, Paideia brought three full teams to the competition. The varsity and freshman teams went to the competition in Decatur, while junior varsity competed in Macon. The varsity team won for the third consecutive year at the Decatur Regionals, and won several individual awards in the process. The 37 total Paideia students who participated won a total of 12 Outstanding Attorney and Outstanding Witness awards. Varsity Mock Trial’s win qualified them for the district tournament on Mar. 2. Despite both having winning records, the JV and the freshman team did not qualify for the next level.

Paideia’s Model UN team also saw success at the University of Chicago Model UN competition. Paideia typically attends National High School Model UN in New York City, but the schedule conflicted with the music trip. Paideia prospered with Emerson Moore ’24 winning an Honorable Mention for his work in the hybrid committee, Las Cortes Constituyentes, and sophomores Riya Kukreja, Cyrus Rahbari, and Daniel Rosenberg all won Verbal Commendations in their respective committees. 

“This conference is a big deal, because it is the final phase in the evolution of a school MUN team: it typically progresses from an MUN team that does not go to any conferences to one that attends one or two, to a team that attends 3-4 in a year, to one that hosts their own conference,” Emerson Moore ’24 says. “So this is showing that our team is more or less attaining its final form, and now we can focus on perfecting what we have, rather than expanding further.  We are already known as one of the better MUN teams in the state, and have regularly been featured on top 50 schools for MUN lists nationally, so the main focus is just onwards and upwards!”

These big tournaments have set up promising results for the final tournaments of the year in both Mock Trial and Model UN.