There’s a New ‘A-Team’ in Town

There are times when they seem like any other El Camino Real High School seniors.

Food runs to Taco Bell. Fast cars. KROQ radio station. Basketball pickup games. Prom planning. And lots of Cherry Coke.

Don’t be fooled.

These nine teen-agers are the finest examples of academic excellence in the Los Angeles Unified School District. They are this year’s Academic Decathlon city champions.

“We’re not how you’d picture an Academic Decathlon team,” said Mike Johnson, 17, one of El Camino’s team members. “We’re real loose. We joke around a lot, and it kind of keeps us going.”

Leading up to the competition, the El Camino team spends more than 30 hours a week joking--and studying--for the March 9 California Academic Decathlon in Bakersfield. For the past two years, LAUSD has been represented by nearby Taft High School in Woodland Hills. Last year the Taft students went on to win the national competition, but this year El Camino edged them out to capture its first city title.

“We have quite a tradition to uphold,” said El Camino Academic Decathlon sponsor Mark Johnson. “If Taft can do it, we can do it. We want to win the national championship.”

This is Mark Johnson’s third year coaching the El Camino decathlon team. Two years ago the team finished third, and last year it was second to Taft.

“It was time,” Johnson said. “This is our year.”

For three years, Johnson has set the tone for the study sessions.

“I always tell them they’re going to lose,” Johnson said, trying to maintain a serious expression. “I told them that all the way to the city competition and look what happened. I’m telling them that still.”

Johnson, 30, may be a history teacher, but he is all teen-ager at heart. The students say he is the reason they tried out for the team.

“He is great and he keeps us going,” said Chris Shellen, a team member. “He’s never serious.”

Johnson has a theory: If El Camino Real doesn’t win the state championship, they will beat up the winners and steal their trophies.

“That way I figure we’ll come home with something,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s sarcastic, light-hearted attitude has rubbed off on the team.

His mental list of the team members, who are all 17 or 18, goes something like this:

The Hard Worker: Jennifer Aaron began studying for Academic Decathlon last summer while on a trip to Europe with her parents. She said there are times when she feels like giving up, but she stays with it because she believes in the team.

The Actress: Maki Becker is the most dramatic of the group. She often instigates a “silly session” by slipping into one of several characters and prancing around the room until the entire team is laughing. She gave up drama for Academic Decathlon this year because, she said, “It’s a crazy group and I’m a crazy person.”

Mr. Mellow: Mike Johnson never lets them see him sweat. He is the only team member to have an outside job; he works at Sears. He dresses in his senior class sweat shirt with his girlfriend’s class ring dangling on a chain around his neck. He recently performed a lip-syncing routine with several of his teammates who got on their knees and mouthed the words to “Short People.”

Mr. Nice Guy: Min Lee laughs with the rest of them when studying turns to one-liners, but he doesn’t make many comebacks. “Poor Min is too nice to defend himself,” Mark Johnson said. “By the time he thinks of a retort, we’re four comments ahead of him.” Lee is also a volunteer worker at Humana West Hills Hospital.

The Instigator: Jon Lynn will do anything for a laugh. He has been known to practice impromptu speeches on topics such as the importance of rotisserie baseball leagues and the irrelevance of philosophers. He enjoys memorizing baseball statistics and Academic Decathlon scores. “He is the funniest person I’ve ever known,” Mark Johnson said.

The Brain: Amir Nashat wants nothing less than to finish the state competition with the single best score in California. At the city competition he finished second overall--behind Min Lee. “It’s an intense competition between the two,” Johnson said. “Of course, since they’re both on my team, I encourage it to be as fierce as possible.”

The Athlete: Steve Oh finished fourth in the city wrestling meet last year and this year had a shot at winning it all, but chose Academic Decathlon instead. “Nothing beats it,” Oh said. Oh doesn’t go much for the joking but appreciates the fun his teammates have. He would rather conduct short, intense study sessions and spend his free time working out and singing in his Christian church choir. He speaks fluent Korean.

The Blonde: Chris Shellen is the subject of many team jokes. Her teammates say she had two strikes against her--she is the only blonde and comes from Montana. Teammate Lynn reminds her often, “Only two things come from Montana: You and lots of cows.” Once she approached the speech teacher for advice on her Academic Decathlon entry and was mistaken for an office girl. She wound up writing her first-place speech on stereotypes.

The Serious One: Natasha Song has entered the war for top scorer between Lee and Nashat. “She spends more time studying for this competition than most people spend studying for the bar exam,” her coach said. She enjoys studying and going over lecture notes.

The team spends five hours a day after school in Room 111 in the B-Building. This is Johnson’s history classroom but since November, when the team won the city competition, it has become a center for learning everything from the latest jokes to the latest chemistry data.

The room is cluttered. Textbooks litter Johnson’s desk. “Economics.” “American Indians.” “Advanced Mathematics.” It all seems very academic until visitors notice a painted sign on the back wall that reads: “Akademik Decathalon.” The words are circled with question marks.

Each weekday afternoon, the El Camino team typically listens to lectures on social science, fine arts, mathematics, literature, economics and science--including physics, biology and chemistry. The rest of the afternoon and part of the evening is spent giving mock speeches, writing essays and practicing for the Super Quiz, which this year is about American Indians. The decathlon covers each of the areas equally.

“Lecturers bring in the latest information and are experts in preparing for the Academic Decathlon,” said Johnson, who has solicited teachers from across the district to lecture at El Camino Real.

Recently, chemistry teacher Richard Erdman from Venice High School interrupted a food break by lecturing the El Camino Real team on molecular bonding.

Taco containers and onion rings littered the desks as Erdman handed them a sheet full of chemistry topics that might appear on the test. The sheet contained words foreign to most college graduates: High ionization, dipole attraction, electronegativity differences, multiple co-available bonds, non-polar molecules.

Suddenly the students shifted gears and began listening to Erdman the way most teen-agers listen to high school gossip.

“Which force bonds a noble gas atom in the liquid phase?” Erdman asked.

Becker raised her hand. “Hydrogen.”

“Right. Otherwise your DNA falls down.”

“Well, we don’t want that,” Lynn piped up from the back of the classroom. “Never know what might happen if your genes fall down at the wrong time.”

“Only you would know about that, Jon,” Becker said.

Several of the academic elite added comments and it was a few minutes before order returned to the classroom.

“Remember the neutron bomb idea,” Erdman continued. “It was supposed to have enough power to rip the heck out of every living thing but leave the cars and buildings.”

“But would it leave bodies, or just dissolve everything?” Shellen asked.

Her teammates burst into laughter. “What a C-rate question, Chris. Are you blond or what?” Mike Johnson shouted over the ruckus.

It continued on until 5:45 p.m. when Erdman packed up and left.

Johnson encouraged the students to go home and study for their other classes. If they had any spare time, they should study for the competition.

“It’s never-ending,” Aaron said. “We have absolutely no free time.”

The team, which began studying for the competition in late August, will continue its grueling schedule as long as it is in the running for the national championship April 19-22 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Last year’s Taft team maintained a similar schedule and are now faring better than most of their peers, studying at top colleges across the country, according to Arthur Berchin, who sponsored last year’s national championship team. Several Taft team members attend Stanford, Harvard and University of California campuses.

“It was worth it,” Berchin said. “It is completely time consuming and it takes a lot of work, but there is a real thrill in winning that makes you forget the hours of studying. I believe they feel the same way over at El Camino Real. We do a lot of things in a similar style.”

The teams wear business clothes--three-piece suits for the guys and dress suits for the girls--at the competitions.

“It gives us a polished look and it makes us feel like we stand out among the others when we get to the competition,” Shellen said. “We want the national title.”

Mark Johnson frowned as he listened to Shellen.

“Don’t count on it,” Johnson said, shaking his head sadly. “We’re going to lose. We’re going to lose bad.”

What a comedian.