Laguna Hills High Wins Another Match of Wits

For the second year in a row, Laguna Hills High School is the Orange County Academic Decathlon champion and will represent the region in state competition in March.

Winners of the annual test of student brainpower, held Nov. 18 at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills, were announced Wednesday night during ceremonies at the Anaheim Marriott.

Laguna Hills, coached by Kathy Lane and Roger Gunderson, finished first in six of the contest’s 10 academic events, including the “Super Quiz,” a test structured like a television game show.

Foothill High in North Tustin and Los Alamitos High placed second and third, respectively. Sunny Hills High in Fullerton was fourth and University High School in Irvine finished fifth. Teams are composed of three “honor” (A average) students, three “scholastic” (B average) students, and three “varsity” (C average) students. Among the other academic events are economics, essays, fine arts, literature, mathematics, social science and speech.

Jeff McCombs, Jack Dietz and Bill Fischer of Laguna Hills earned top individual honors in their respective categories. McCombs won the honors category, while Dietz won the scholastic division and Fischer was first in the varsity level.

This year’s competition attracted 50 of the county’s public and private high schools. Winner of the state competition will compete in April at the national competition in Iowa.

A total of 885 awards were handed out.

A new honor the “Larry Minne Challenge Award” was added this year in honor of Foothill High School’s academic decathlon coach, who is battling cancer. The award is intended to honor a student who has mastered significant challenges, such as dealing with physical handicaps, overcoming cultural barriers, making a noteworthy academic improvement through the decathlon, or assisting others in the decathlon. The winner of the award was Laura Araujo of Santa Ana High School, who was a chief recruiter for her decathlon team. Her involvement included helping to hire a speech coach for the team and coaching teammates on fine arts subjects.

The individual winners in the honors category included:

McCombs, first; Robert Kovacev of Foothill, second; Elisa Altman of Sunny Hills, third; Winston Chang of University High, fourth; Jay Kim of Laguna Hills, fifth; Diana Chuang of Foothill, sixth; Brandi Krantz of Woodbridge, seventh; Vadim Gutnik of University, eighth; Jae Kang of Sunny Hills, ninth; and Alice Lee of Brea-Olinda, 10th.

After Dietz in the scholastic division, were Todd Faurot of Laguna Hills, second; Amber Broersma of Los Alamitos, third; Dominic Manzo of Foothill, fourth; Lilly Chow of Irvine, fifth; Rebecca Gaw of Los Alamitos, sixth; Leslie Tao of Edison, seventh; Justine Garvey of Edison and Ted Lorance of Saddleback, tied for eighth; Chris Reyes of Trabuco Hills, ninth; and Mike Lee of Laguna Hills, 10th.

The varsity top 10 were: Fischer, first; Julian Kingston of Laguna Hills, second; James Hurst of Esperanza, third; Dennis Ulrich of Mission Viejo, fourth; David Parks of Los Alamitos, fifth; Jennifer Brockett of Sunny Hills, sixth; Mike Jones of Trabuco Hills, seventh; David Chihorek of Mission Viejo, eighth; Bing Lee of Dana Hills, ninth; and Kevin Williams of Pacifica High, 10th.