Mock trial is a competitive activity, and the presumptive goal of a mock trial team is to win mock trial competitions. Within a single season, which occurs during a school year, a team will be formed to participate in approximately six county-level competitions. The winning team at the county level will go on to compete at the state level, and the winning team at the state level will participate in a national competition. Within this framework, we could plausibly suppose winning the county-level competition to be a team’s initial high-level goal, leading to a series of sub-goals that comprise winning individual matches.

However, the actual situation is more complex. While the team roster for each year is unique, individual students may participate for more than one year. Thus the team for any given year is likely to include a subset of students who have participated in one or more previous years. In addition, the roles of teacher coach and attorney coach are often filled by the same people from year to year. And finally, independent of its current composition, the “team” is likely to be viewed by the school community as an institution with a persistent identity. This all provides a modulating context. A team that starts out with the goal of winning every match may, after a few losses, change its goals to focus on grooming students who are likely to return and participate in the team in the next school year. A team that has not much hope of winning the county-level competition may adopt a more achievable goal of doing better than the last year’s team. And even in cases where the goal begins and remains that of winning every match throughout the season, the strategies the team pursues are likely to be influenced by considerations of the team’s history, reputation and future viability.

The goals of competition also must co-exist with other kinds of goals that may be adopted by the team. Participating in a team is a social activity, and the team as a whole may develop social goals. Similarly, a school team may have educational goals.

Of all these possible and intersecting goals, however, the goals most likely to function as shared goals, as described in Components of Collaboration, are the goals related to competition and winning within a season.