L.A. School Wins U.S. Academic Decathlon
ANCHORAGE — Nine seniors from Los Angeles’ El Camino Real High School won the 2001 U.S. Academic Decathlon on Saturday night, defeating the returning champions from Texas in the closest contest in memory.
Just 21 points separated El Camino Real from James E. Taylor High School in a contest with a maximum possible score of 60,000. The difference is equivalent to the value of one or two questions in the 10-event, three-day competition, one decathlon official said. El Camino Real scored 46,547 points to Taylor’s 46,526.
Whitney M. Young Magnet School from Chicago took third place, but it trailed the top two finishers by more than 1,500 points. A Wisconsin school and another team from Texas rounded out the top five.
“It’s unbelievable,” said El Camino’s Dennis Kuo. “I just looked back at the beginning eight months and we never could have known we’d do this. It is a dream come true--just amazing.”
In winning, El Camino Real reclaimed the national trophy that the Woodland Hills school won in 1998. Taylor High, from Katy, Texas, near Houston, won the decathlon last year and was the top-seeded team going into the contest that began Thursday.
In the competition’s 20 years, only California and Texas teams have won.
El Camino Real’s students also did well individually in the competition, which involved 500 students with a range of grade-point averages.
In the decathlon’s division for C students, Alan Wittenberg of West Hills took the gold medal and a $1,000 scholarship. Aria Haghighi, one of the team’s A students, placed second in his division, winning $750. Other members of the team earned more than 20 medals in individual events.
California and Texas were favored to win--again--all along, but teams were looking to Saturday’s final portion of the contest, the Super Quiz, for an indication of which school would ultimately triumph. When El Camino Real, Taylor and Wisconsin’s Catholic Memorial High School appeared to have tied for first, the result did little to calm the contestants’ nerves.
But once scores from the Super Quiz held on Friday were added to Saturday’s results, the Wisconsin school won that portion of the event outright, followed by El Camino and Taylor. However, the Super Quiz counts for just 4% of a team’s score.
Besides the 55 teams from 39 states and their coaches, more than 500 cheering parents, teachers and local residents watched the 100-minute quiz at the William A. Egan Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage. It was the only part of the three-day contest open to the public.
An estimated 1,000 computer users tuned in online, according to the Webcast’s producer.
Except for having an audience present, the Super Quiz resembled a test students might take in class. They sat at tables and marked their answers in pencil on a computerized form.
El Camino Real’s fan club numbered more than 30, including the school’s principal, administrators from the Los Angeles Unified School District and two former academic decathlon coaches. Relatives of El Camino Real’s nine seniors wore matching T-shirts in the school’s blue and gold.
The theme of the 2001 Super Quiz was “Concepts of the Self,” focused on theories about individuality in philosophy, psychology and religion. Multiple-choice questions tested students’ knowledge of philosopher Rene Descartes’ writings, Native American religion and Jewish rabbinical theory, among other topics.
The questions were drawn from a packet of articles that teams purchased, a recent shift in the decathlon’s curriculum that has been criticized for promoting rote memorization over independent research.
The U.S. Academic Decathlon tests students in six academic subjects and in speeches, interviews, essays and the Super Quiz. Teams, which generally have nine students each, must include students with A, B and C averages.
El Camino Real’s team--Wittenberg, Haghighi, Kuo, Elan Bar, Walter Ching, Grace Giles, Samantha Henry Scott Lulovics and Ryan Ruby--won the school’s eighth Los Angeles city decathlon in February and its fifth state championship last month.
