Granada Hills Charter High School captured the California Academic Decathlon title once again this weekend in Sacramento, clearing the way for it to defend its prestigious national title in Wisconsin next month.
It was the San Fernando Valley school’s sixth state Academic Decathlon win since 2011 and it will be vying for just as many national titles when it competes at the 35th Annual United States Academic Decathlon Championship from April 17-23 in Madison, Wisconsin.
“It’s something that we put so much work into so just to see that pay off after such a long time, there’s really no other feeling like it,” Granada Hills Charter senior Mark Aguila said by phone Sunday.
The Granada Hills team scored 55,211.0 points out of a possible 60,000 in the grueling battle of wits, poise and concentration in which more than 65 high schools competed in various divisions, according to California Academic Decathlon.
Aguila said the intense preparation, which began in the summer, has taught him to be a better teammate.
“You really have to help everyone out and you can’t focus on yourself,” said Aguila, who hopes to go to UCLA to study math. “I’ve learned how to do that, learned how to teach other people things that they may not understand.”
Harsimar Dhanoa, a coach for the Granada Hills’ Academic Decathlon team, said they worked hard with students individually on subjects they had difficulties with or didn’t like at the beginning of the year.
“A lot of them have pushed through to do really well in those events,” Dhanoa, who was a student on the school’s 2010-11 national championship team, said. “All have grown personally so much. It’s great to see how far they’ve come.”
A California school has won the last fourteen national titles in nearly three dozen years of national competition and the Golden State has placed first or second in every year but one, according to the California Academic Decathlon.
Following Granada Hills Charter, the other top scoring teams were El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, Franklin High School in L.A.’s Highland Park, John Marshall High School in L.A.’s Los Feliz, South Pasadena High School, Edgewood High School in West Covina, Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, Mark Keppel High School in Alhabmra, Woodbridge High School in Irvine and West High School in Torrance, according to CAD.
Because of high scores in their categories, three other high schools get to compete in the U.S. Academic Decathlon Online National Competitions in April. They are El Camino Real Charter, which won the large school title with 54,017.4 points; Edgewood High School, which won the medium school title with 50,263.8 points; and St. Helena High School in Napa County, which won the small school title with 42,176 points.
Each nine-person team must include three honor students (3.75 and above GPA), three scholastic students (3.00-3.74 GPA) and three varsity students (2.99 GPA and below.)
The Decathlon, which had the theme this year of World War II, is made up of 10 separate competitions: speech, prepared and impromptu interviews, essay, art, economics, language and literature, mathematics, music, social science and “Super Quiz” written and oral relay.
But this year, the Super Quiz results were excluded due to a mishap. When the state director of the California Academic Decathlon learned that the test questions “had been compromised,” they decided to adjust, according to a CAD statement.
The U.S. Academic Decathlon apparently gave the California Academic Decathlon the same Super Quiz questions as the state of Alaska’s competition, which was held weeks ago and was recorded and posted on YouTube for everyone to see.
“In the interest of fairness to all California decathletes, after discussion between the state director, representative board members and county coordinators, it was decided to base competition results on the ten decathlon events only and exclude Super Quiz results,” CAD said in a written statement.
The Granada Hills Charter team members are: Melissa Santos, Aishah Mahmud, Kevin Ly (honor students); Mark Aguila, Christopher Lo, Peter Shin (scholastic students); Sebastian Gonzalez, Sabrina Carlos, Jordan Barretto (varsity students); and coaches Dhanoa, Rachael Phipps and Jonathan Sturtevant.
Four of the students on the winning team, including Aguila, have competed in the national competition at least once before, said Mathew Arnold, coach emeritus.
“It’s really a different level to compete nationally so we do know we have a lot more to go,” Aguila said. “We’re ready to work hard and keep going.”
