Quiz Kids : High School Academic Teams Tune Up for Competition

It’s time for those high school preseason practices, when students hunker down, clench their teeth and grunt it out as they scrimmage against other squads prepping for combat.

Football players, perhaps? Hardly.

Try local high school academic decathlon teams, already in the white heat of preparing for the annual competition next month when students throughout Los Angeles go head-to-head in a battle of the brains. On Wednesday, eight teams--including six from the San Fernando Valley--faced off in the Canoga Park High School cafeteria for a practice round.

The subjects: ecology, biology and chemistry.

The object: a perfect score out of 64 questions.

The moderator cleared her throat before reading the first question: “The greatest source of nitrogen used by U.S. farmers is: A) green manure , B) synthetic fertilizer , C) hog manure , D) human sewage or E) burned stubble .”

In front of her, eight competitors--one from each school--screwed up their faces, gazed into space or tapped their pencils. A few boys in the audience rubbed their unshaven chins in mock confusion at choice E. Other team members shrugged their shoulders and giggled.

Several seconds passed. “Put down your pencils,” the moderator commanded, then announced the answer--B--to groans or thumbs-up signs.

During the hourlong competition, students had to come up with answers ranging from “obligate aerobes” to “Wild and Scenic Rivers Act” to “comb jelly” to “two.”

Each team consists of nine students--three with A, three with B and three with C grade averages. The Nov. 17 decathlon will bring together 56 teams in a grueling daylong competition in nine categories and the Super Quiz--a rowdy, high-pressured, game-show-like event staged before an audience.

Most of the teams present on Wednesday began getting ready last spring, studying outlines and taking practice exams in a class devoted expressly to preparing for the competition. Now, with the actual event looming, the pressure is seeping in.

“It’s real nerve-racking,” said Gil Strauss, 17, a senior at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. “It’s less than a month away. That’s very close.”

Strauss and his teammates practice two to three hours each afternoon under the watchful eye of their coaches, Jeff Craig and Mark Johnson, who directed El Camino to citywide victory and then second place in statewide competition two years ago.

Taft High School in Woodland Hills, a perennial decathlon powerhouse, showed its strength Wednesday by winning the scrimmage. Canoga Park took second and El Camino third. The other Valley teams hailed from Birmingham, Chatsworth and Cleveland high schools.

Johnson, who has guided El Camino’s team for four years, said the decathlon is as intense for him as it is for his charges.

“It takes a lot of time,” Johnson said. “Every year I say I’m going to quit. The pressure gets to me.”

El Camino’s students themselves, however, meet the challenge with a dose of humor--witness the “team noose” that they bring to scrimmages. After each contest, the team awards a length of rope, looped into a hangman’s knot, to the member who receives the lowest score.

“We joke around a lot,” Strauss said.

The same holds true for the Canoga Park group, said Amber Knight, a senior who gave up cheerleading to secure a spot on the team.

“We’ve got some pretty weird people on our team, but we’re pretty close,” she said, noting that members have often forsaken Friday night football games and other social events for group study sessions. But the decathlon, she added, is worth the sacrifice.

And, apparently, even the greatest adolescent sacrifice of all.

“I don’t even go out on dates anymore,” she said, laughing.