Will Move on to State Competition : Foothill High Wins County’s Academic Decathlon for the Third Straight Time

For the third year in a row, Foothill High School in the Tustin Unified School District is Orange County’s Academic Decathlon champion.

Foothill, whose victory was announced Thursday night at the Academic Decathlon awards banquet at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, will now represent Orange County in the statewide decathlon.

The annual “brainpower” event pits high school teams against each other in 10 categories of knowledge, ranging from fine arts to science. The team with the highest cumulative score wins the event.

Each high school team is composed of two A-average students, two B-average students and two C-average students.

Second place in the overall county competition was won by Los Alamitos High School. The other winners and their positions were: University High of Irvine, third place; Pacifica High School of Garden Grove, fourth; Dana Hills High of Dana Point, fifth; Tustin High, sixth; Laguna Hills High, seventh; El Toro High, eighth; Mission Viejo High, ninth, and Loara High of Anaheim, 10th.

The top individual students in overall competition were named according to their grade-average category. In the Honor (A-average) Category, James Wilhelm of Foothill High was first, James Alverson of Foothill High was second and Jeffrey Palk of Los Alamitos High was third.

In the B-average category, Garett Jones of Foothill High was first, Paul Egendorf of Tustin High, second, and Aron Spencer of Mission Viejo High, third.

In the Varsity (C-average) Category, Scott Rainey of Los Alamitos High was first, Paul Wexler of University High was second and Albert Fong of Woodbridge High in Irvine was third.

The Decathlon was conceived 19 years ago by county schools Supt. Robert Peterson, and over the years the competition has spread throughout the state and the nation.