High school students from across the State participated in the 35th Annual California Academic Decathlon on March 21 and 22, seeking to represent the union in a national competition. Amongst a pool of 65 schools and 565 students, two Westside area schools placed in the Top 15 but did not score enough points to move on to Nationals.
Beverly High School finished fifth in the California Academic Decathlon, scoring 50,838.8 points out of a possible 65,400. Nearby Hamilton High School in Beverlywood finished in fifteenth place with a final score of 48,136.6
The two schools representing California in the national competition are El Camino Charter High School and Granada Hills Charter High School, both hailing from the San Fernando Valley.
Douglas Wu (8,441.8 points) was the highest scoring student from Beverly Hills High School; Camila Hayashi’s 8,313.4 points was tops for Hamilton High School.
Winners were announced during the weekend at an award ceremony in Sacramento, Calif.
By finishing in the Top 15, teams from both Beverly Hills and Hamilton high schools were designated as Division I.
Each school sends a team of nine students to the California Academic Decathlon. According to the competition’s administrators, students from each school are grouped into thirds depending on their respective grade point averages (GPA).
Specifically, Honor students are team members with a GPA of 3.75 or more. Team members with GPAs between 3.00 and 3.75 are Scholastic students, while those with a GPA of 2.99 or below are Varsity.
The California Academic Decathlon is held annually. All public and private high schools are eligible to participate in the academic-themed competition, which features students taking 30-minute multiple choice tests in subjects such as Art, Economics, Music, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Science, and Social Science.
In addition to the tests, each team member from a school must give one prepared four-minute speech and an improvised two-minute speech. Other elements of the competition include students individually participating in a seven-minute interview and writing an expository essay within 50 minutes.
A Super Quiz Relay anchors the California Academic Decathlon, which is open to the public. High school teams must answer questions from subject such as Art, Economics, Music, Language and Literature, Science, and Social Science.
The 33rd Annual United States Academic Decathlon Championship takes place in April. California has won the national championship for 11 consecutive years and is seeking a twelfth title in as many years.
California has never ranked worse than second in the previous 32 national competitions.
The award ceremony was held March 23 at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento.
To find out more about the individual winners in various categories, please visit California Academic Decathlon website.
