Sunny Hills High Does All Right in Decathlon : Academics: School’s four-scholar squad plays it smart in the finals with a perfect score. They win a share of the Southland title and trip to Germany.

It’s hard to be right all the time, but some people just are.

Fifteen-year-old Louie Cheng, for example, and his teammates from Sunny Hills High School never missed a question during a two-hour decathlon Thursday, tying for first place in a Southland contest which started with 600 high school teams.

The four-member team from Sunny Hills vied with 11 other teams in the finals Thursday of the “Ambassadors to Europe” program, winning a weeklong trip to Germany on Dec. 9, where they will participate in a summit with German students and tour Heidelberg, Wiesbaden and other cities.

Cheng and his teammates, who spent several sleepless nights preparing for Thursday’s competition against 60 of Southern California’s brightest students, didn’t rely on training alone.

“We prayed quite a bit before each question,” team member Jedidiah Yueh, 16, said.

Their technique paid off. The team, which included Ken Chen and Janet M. Lee, both 16, hesitated only once before answering a question, and finally tied for first place with the team from Harvard-Westlake School of North Hollywood.

Although they had said they were confident of winning, Yueh and Lee tapped their feet constantly, Lee rocked in her seat and Cheng gripped his chair as the questions were asked of other teams.

But the Sunny Hills team never faltered. Preparation, team members said, was everything.

They divided the subjects that the contest would cover, making each member responsible for becoming an expert in the field.

“Two or three times this week, we stayed up until 2 and 3 in the morning” studying, Yueh said.

They also created memory devices such as unusual associations to remember facts. For example, to remember the name of the former prime minister of Greece, Andreas Papandreou, they focused on the “papa” of his last name. They knew that the prime minister’s wife was 60 years his junior, and he was more than old enough to be her father.

Yueh added that he prepared for the contest by eating light.

“It’s better to take tests when you’re cold and hungry because that’s when you’re most aware,” he said.

It paid off when they were asked questions such as the name of the isthmus that connects the Peloponnesus of Greece with the mainland.

After a short consultation, Cheng strode again to the stage and answered, “The Corinth.”

The contest, held at the Los Angeles Times building in Times Mirror Square, was sponsored by The Times and Lufthansa German Airlines.

Afterward, team members said they were looking forward to seeing Germany so soon after the reunification.

“We can tell our grandchildren, ‘I was there,’ ” Lee said.

Their last question in the competition, worth 20 points, was on Germany, and later the teammates would call it “anti-climactic” because they knew it cold: “In what year did the German Democratic Republic begin to construct the Berlin Wall and in what year did it fall?”

After the winners were announced, Ken Chen said, “It’s not sunk in. We’re very surprised.”

They said that they hope to compete next year as well, although it depends on where the destination is.

“They do it on current events, so they might do Iraq next year, but we don’t want to go there,” Cheng quipped.