The school’s Academic Decathlon team competed in their state competition March 20-23 in Santa Clara, Calif., bringing back first place for a third year in a row.
“Our team worked very hard to [win the state competition],” senior Bahar Mirzajanzadeh said. “It was a fun experience, even if it got stressful at times.”
The competition consists of ten events with seven of the eight being objective and three being subjective. The objective exams are multiple-choice and include Economics, Art, Literature, Math, Science, Social Science and Music. The subjective events are an essay, a prepared and impromptu speech and an interview. Students compete in the Honors, Scholastic, or Varsity level which is determined by their academic Grade Point Average (GPA). This victory marks a milestone in the school’s history as the team has never won three consecutive state titles.
“The best way [for us] to learn is to test and figure out what you don’t know,” senior Brendan Luna said. “Figuring out what mistakes you make consistently over time and asking for help is extremely important.”
The amount of blood, sweat and tears that go into this program is applaudable. Members of the team devote all of their time to the competition, trying to study whenever and wherever they can. Practices go into the late night hours, and even on weekends. Their practices last seven days a week, and their long hours of pure dedication culminate in their high scores and prestige, as the school has won ten national championships in the past, more than any other school in the nation.
“There is no one person that is responsible for all of our successes,” senior Zarah Zuhair said. “It’s a collective team effort, and that’s what I never really understood until I joined [the program].”
Teamwork, as the team says, carries their competition. They attribute their success to the individual contributions of each member, as they all have different strengths that turn them into a cohesive group. They are all comfortable asking each other for help, and through practice, they have gotten to know each other on a different, personal level.
“[The competition] really helped expose my weaknesses and it was kind of eye-opening,” Luna said “We’re all going to continue to work on filling out our skills and review what we did the worst in.”
The state competition is the final stop before the team moves on to nationals, where they hope to continue their streak of being first-place champions for a third year. Although their scores are already extremely high, they understand that there is always room for improvement and hope to refine their skills as much as they can, as this is their final competition. Since the whole team is composed of seniors, there will be a bittersweet feeling as they continue to prepare for their final competition of the year.
“You learn so much; you’re able to dissect everything and master the subjects piece by piece,” Zuhair said. “To be able to be a part of something like this, I know I’m ready for anything else I may encounter past the competition.”