ECC debaters to face East Coast elite — again

The giant slayer is back only this time, it's the little guys who will have a target on their heads.

For the second time in two years, the mock trial team at Elgin Community College is heading to Boston to face elite East Coast schools, including Harvard, Cornell, Brown and Boston College.

Last year, the ECC team, only in its third year of existence, earned a spot in Harvard's mock trial invitational and scored surprise victories over Yale and Villanova.

On Saturday and Sunday, ECC's team will be in Waltham, Mass., just outside Boston, for Brandeis University's invitational. The high-ranked schools that ECC surprised last year will be out for revenge. And the pressure is on the ECC students to repeat the strong performance that led to a berth in the national tournament last spring.

“Last year, we got to sneak up on everybody at Harvard,” team adviser and paralegal professor Ronald Kowalczyk said. “This year, the expectations are up there from a lot of people, which puts a lot of pressure on the team. It makes it a little more stressful heading out East.”

Team captain Jennifer Rieger said her team is up for the challenge, especially after a tournament last weekend in Quincy, Ill., and daily practice sessions in the week leading up to the Brandeis tournament.

“I think there is definitely more pressure for us to perform considering last year's results, but I don't think it's anything we can't handle and I have a lot of faith in my team,” said Rieger, who is in her last semester at ECC. “I am happy that this year we can be taken seriously and not overlooked since we were able to stand up to the Ivy Leaguers and hold our own last year.”

ECC's mock trial team will face four teams this weekend. This year, students will argue both sides of a fictional product liability case.

On the one side is the parent of a two-year-old boy killed after swallowing a toy made with a hazardous substance. On the other side is the toy company, which argues the child had a pre-existing medical condition that contributed to his death.

Rieger and Kowalczyk are not making any firm predictions for how the team will do this year, but the team will have one thing on their side: they've been through this before.

“I believe in the ability of every member of this team to succeed and perform with the best of the best and show what we're capable of,” says Rieger. “We have yet to bring home a trophy amongst all of our individual awards and I have a feeling that this is our year.”

Staff Writer Tara Garcia Mathewson contributed to this report.