On Jan. 6th, the We The People team (Weeple) attended states at Michigan State Law School. This was their second competition, with their first being districts. 

Heading into states the morale was high as the team had previously placed first in districts. With this momentum, they set their sights on getting first at states but in the end, finished in second place. 

“East Kentwood got first, and we overall got second, but we had beaten East Kentwood at districts,” Adam Horos, coach and teacher of Weeple said. 

The team didn’t have poor performance this year at states, but instead there was just a lot of strong competition, making scoring tight

“Out of about 2000 points, East Kentwood won by about 20 points. It was around a 1% margin, so it was very close,” Horos said. 

Although the team didn’t take overall first place, their individual units had multiple wins.

“Unit one got last place, unit two came in second, unit three got first, unit four got first, unit five got first , and unit six got second,” George Murphy ’23, a coach of unit two said.

The team faced some challenges at states but managed to work around them.

“For most units, there are 3-4 people for each. For one of our units, though, we had to have two students answer questions, because two people were not able to come. This is the first time this has ever happened, and they had to answer all the questions, just the two of them, and they did amazing. They won, beat everyone, and had super high scores,” Horos said. 

As for nationals, whether the team will attend isn’t certain.

“We can’t go to nationals unless we receive a wild card nomination, but that doesn’t seem likely,” Murphy ‘23 said. 

Although a nationals position is up in the air, the team managed to grow closer and learn from each other. 

“I’m very proud of my unit. We did start off having a few differences but we learned to slowly gel together as we all understood how we fit together in order to be the best unit we could and help deliver for our team. I learned a lot about different viewpoints and how really, we all need to listen to one another in order to form views that best represent us,” Harry Cornell ‘25 said.