Laguna Hills High Climbs Back on Top in Decathlon

Laguna Hills High School, a perennial winner in county, state and national Academic Decathlon competitions, was the top school again this year in the Orange County Academic Decathlon for 11th- and 12th-graders.

Laguna Hills, proclaimed the county champion at an awards banquet Tuesday night at the Anaheim Marriott, won the title with a combined score of 44,492, besting its nearest competitor--Sunny Hills High School of Fullerton--by nearly 2,000 points. The competition was held Nov. 17 at El Dorado High School in Placentia.

The Laguna Hills team, which won the state championship last year and went on to capture second place in the national Academic Decathlon in Des Moines, Iowa, in April, took the county championship despite falling 500 points short of Sunny Hills in the Super Quiz, the event’s final test and often the deciding factor in academic decathlons.

Laguna Hills will represent Orange County and attempt to defend its state championship at the California Academic Decathlon next March in Riverside. The national finals will be held in April at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Following Laguna Hills and Sunny Hills in overall scores were University High School of Irvine, with 41,714 points; Esperanza High, Anaheim, 41,037; Los Alamitos High, 40,232; Mission Viejo High, 40,145; Trabuco Hills High, Mission Viejo, 39,871; Dana Hills High, Dana Point, 37,940; Troy High, Fullerton, 37,622; and Irvine High, 37,431.

Among individual winners, Winston Chang of University High School scored the highest point total in the honors division with 8,467 points, including a perfect 1,000 on the essay portion of the test. Todd Faurot, a member of the national runner-up Laguna Hills team last year, scored the highest in the scholastic division with 7,428 points, and Kirk Brown, a newcomer to the Laguna Hills team, topped the varsity division with a score of 6,885.

The Decathlon, created 20 years ago by outgoing county Supt. of Schools Robert Peterson, tests students in economics, essay-writing, fine arts, interview skills, literature, mathematics, science, social science and speech, and is capped by the Super Quiz, a “Jeopardy!”-style quiz segment. Forty-eight high school teams took part this year.