Academic Decathlon Super Quiz : Surge Gains Taft High a 3-Way Tie

In a dramatic end to a grueling day, the Taft High School Academic Decathlon team Saturday made a last-minute charge to tie for the lead in the state Super Quiz.

The Woodland Hills team, along with Roosevelt High School of Fresno and St. Helena High School of Napa County, scored 17 of 30 points to tie for first place in the Super Quiz segment of the California Academic Decathlon.

Orange County’s Los Alamitos High School and Rio Americano High School of Sacramento each scored 16 points in a tie for second place, according to unofficial returns. Palo Alto High School and Hogan High School of Vallejo tied for third place, with 15 points each.

The Super Quiz is the only public contest in this 10-event battle of brains. Although scores in the Super Quiz are weighted equally with other decathlon events, winners of the event are usually among the winners of the overall competition.

Decathlon officials said it was unusual for so many teams to tie for the top three Super Quiz positions. However, this is not the first time in the nine-year history of the statewide competition that there has been a tie among the top teams, they said.

Winner Announced Monday

The winning Academic Decathlon team will go San Antonio, Tex., in April to compete in the national Academic Decathlon. The California decathlon winner, along with the names of individual medal winners, will be announced in Sacramento on Monday.

Saturday’s competition began at 7:30 a.m. when students representing 47 California high schools arrived on the campus of Cal State, Sacramento.

After being assigned an identification number, all the decathletes were given about an hour to write an essay. The rest of the day was spent taking tests in economics, fine arts, literature, math, science and social studies.

The students were also judged on their ability to give a four-minute prepared speech and a two-minute impromptu speech. And they were rated on their poise during a 10-minute interview.

Going into the Super Quiz, unofficial results for three of the written tests showed Taft among the top five schools.

But even armed with that knowledge, the Woodland Hills team started off slowly in the Super Quiz.

Team members missed answers to seemingly easy questions.

Taft was one point behind the leaders when Lillian Morris, the last of the six-member team to take part in the Super Quiz, walked to the center of the Cal State Sacramento gymnasium.

When Morris, the only woman on the Taft team, correctly answered the first question on the history of flight, her teammates in the bleachers started jumping up and down wildly.

Her answer pulled Taft into a five-way tie for first.

A Miss, Then 3 Correct Answers

Morris missed the next question, but went on to answer the final three questions correctly to give Taft a share of first place.

“I did well, but there was a lot of luck involved,” an ebullient Morris said after the competition. “This Super Quiz was really hard. Seventeen out of 30 is just a little better than 50%.”

Taft decathlon coach Arthur Berchin said he felt good about his team’s performance in the daylong academic meet. He was hesitant, however, to predict whether his team would lead the Los Angeles Unified School District to its second consecutive California Decathlon crown.

“It’s impossible to say who is going to win this,” Berchin said. “It’s all up in the air right now.”