Laguna Hills Awarded 2nd in U.S. Decathlon : Academics: The high school team was outscored by the Texas state champs but can claim the best-ever finish for an Orange County school.

Laguna Hills High School was awarded second place in the U.S. Academic Decathlon on Sunday, just missing the national championship but still achieving the best-ever finish for an Orange County school.

The Laguna Hills team, which earned its place in the finals by winning the California state championship last March, was bested in the two-day tournament of tests only by the Texas state champions, which topped Laguna Hills by 592 points--the near-equivalent of three correct answers on the final “Super Quiz” event held Saturday.

The team’s finish was highlighted by several individual gold, bronze and silver medals awarded for individual performances, and a total of $7,000 in scholarships was awarded to three team members whose individual cumulative scores were among the nine best out of 351 competitors. Teams from 38 states and the District of Columbia participated in the two-day finals.

“We’re extremely proud of our guys,” said a pleased yet disappointed Laguna Hills coach, Kathy Lane. “This will motivate us to come back next year.”

But while Lane’s sentiments were echoed by the team’s other coach, Roger Gunderson, and about 30 Laguna Hills parents, relatives and administrators who flew to Des Moines for the national championships, the members of the nine-man squad took little solace in the second-place finish.

“We lost,” mumbled stunned senior Jeff DeWit, 17, moments after the team from Lake Highlands High School in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Tex., was named America’s smartest teen-agers.

The California champions amassed 46,035 points in the two-day competition, which tested knowledge and skills in math, economics, essay-writing, interviewing, language, literature, fine arts, science and social science, and ended with the Super Quiz, a head-to-head competition among the 39 competing teams. The Texas representatives scored 46,627 points.

Tension gripped the ballroom of the Des Moines Marriott on Sunday in the moments before the winning teams were announced.

Jeff McCombs, 18, a Laguna Hills senior and the team captain, said the team would later realize the honor in reaching second in the nation after months of intense competition at the county, state and finally national levels.

“We’ve been fighting for this for so long, so it’s a letdown right now,” McCombs said. “But second place is awesome.”

While the team as a whole placed second, several members came away with personal bests. Senior decathlete Jack Dietz, 17, walked away with three medals--two silver, for his essay on American Indian history and his performance on the science test, and one bronze in economics.

Dietz, who plans to attend UC San Diego this fall, was also awarded a $3,000 scholarship by the American Honda Foundation for acquiring a second-best 7,964 points in overall individual scoring in the scholastic, or B student, category.

Two other team members, senior Julian Kingston, 17, and junior Jay Kim, 16, were awarded $2,000 scholarships for finishing third in overall scoring in their respective grade-point categories. Kim, whose 8,311 points was the team’s best individual score, was also awarded a gold medal in social science, and Kingston took the bronze medal on the same test.

Other medal winners were team captain McCombs, who won a bronze in the honors division of the social science test, and senior Bill Fischer, 17, who won silver medals on the economics and social science tests.

Also on the team were senior Mike Lee, 17, and juniors Ryan Sakamoto and Todd Faurot, both 16.

“You’ve got to be so proud of these guys, being second in the nation,” Coach Gunderson said after the awards ceremony. “No Orange County team has ever come that close.”