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Foothill High School’s competitive civics team is once again heading to the national We the People finals in Washington, D.C. after taking home first place in the state championships last month.
Graham McBride, the Falcons’ We the People coach, told the Weekly that while he is overwhelmed with the positive results Foothill’s team has had in recent years — last year’s group earned third place at nationals — he recognizes the competition will be fierce due to the program being so successful across the country.
“Foothill High School has never won the national title in We the People,” he said. “It’s the dream. It’s something that I knock on wood for.”
However, he is holding out hope for his students to win at the D.C. competition from April 9-11 and said his students are capable of winning — it’s just a matter of stars aligning.
“I think that it’s not a matter of the kids not being capable,” McBride said. “These kids are rock stars. It’s just a matter of the right mixture of ingredients at some point in the future, and all we can do is hope that we get that mixture correct.”
We the People is a national educational program where high school seniors demonstrate their understanding of the U.S. government and the Constitution by participating in simulated congressional hearings, according to the program’s website.
These high school teams compete every year at their respective state events in order to get a chance to represent their state at the national level.Â
The 2025 state finals took place over the first weekend of February where dozens of other competitive civics teams from other schools competed for first place, which Foothill claimed in the end.
According to the program, Arcadia High School — a school located north of Los Angeles — placed second while Pleasanton’s Amador Valley High School placed third.
But McBride said having been a coach for Foothill’s team over the last six years and having gone through the program himself, one thing he has always tried to tell his students is that winning these competitions is not solely what the program is about.
He said We the People is a non-partisan program that leans into the fact that they get a lot of kids with different political viewpoints on major political issues and so that students — by nature of program — are forced to find common ground, which McBride said is a much needed skill in these polarizing times.
“It can be very easy to focus only on disagreements in our society, and it can be much harder to find common ground,” he said. “When you encourage students to find that common ground, it kind of imparts to them a little bit as to why finding common ground is necessary and what necessary effort … that it takes to find common ground.”
He said he tells kids he doesn’t care about political views, he cares about them understanding how their government works.
“At its best, it’s a program about optimism for the future,” McBride said. “We don’t teach our students to blindly accept any kind of conclusion. It’s a lot of addressing the difficult problems, talking about the different types of solutions to those problems.”
“In the end, it’s a lot about finding common ground, learning to engage and understand our system a little bit and in the end, make for a better and more prepared citizen,” he added.
He said he has been really lucky to have students who are committed to the program because it does take a lot of accountability on the student. Unlike a typical class setting, McBride said his students spend hours after class training because to them, its more about just a grade — it’s about competing at that high level.
That’s why he said his students are more than capable enough to win nationals this year and that all he can really do as a coach is step out of their way and push them to do their best.
