High Life A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Near Miss for Laguna Hills Decathletes

Laguna Hills High School was awarded second place in the U.S. Academic Decathlon last 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, who topped Laguna Hills by 592 points--about the equivalent of three correct answers on the final “Super Quiz” event.

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 for 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.

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, also won a $3,000 scholarship from 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, also won a gold medal in social science, and Kingston took the bronze medal on the same test.

Other medal winners were team captain and senior Jeff McCombs, 18, 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.