Laguna Hills Brain Trust Thinks Team Just May Win : Academics: High school scholars ‘in the position we wanted to be in’ after Super Quiz. They’ll learn if they’re national champs on Monday.

Laguna Hills High School remained a top contender to win the United States Academic Decathlon on Saturday after facing 44 other schools from around the country in a fast-paced quiz-show-style event that wrapped up the two-day competition.

Laguna Hills, California’s state champion and the second-place finisher in last year’s national competition, finished in a four-way tie for second place in Saturday’s Super Quiz. But the eight team members were confident that they scored well in nine other events including seven written tests they also took Saturday at Occidental College.

The winning school will be announced Monday, with team members scheduled to meet President Bush later this week at the White House.

About 100 family, friends and other Laguna Hills High School fans cheered from the bleachers of Occidental College’s gymnasium as each of their team members answered five questions--all on the topic of space exploration--during the Super Quiz.

Laguna Hills team captain Jay Kim, a senior, answered four of the five questions correctly, but couldn’t get over the one he missed. Kim was asked what a high-energy astronomy observatory studies and should have answered Cygnus X-1, a possible black hole. Instead, he said solar flares.

“I don’t know how I could have missed that,” Kim said.

“The Super Quiz was very challenging,” he added. “There was a good variety of questions.”

Laguna Hills coaches Roger Gunderson and Kathy Lane said their team is confident they have performed well over the two days, but they will be “walking a tightrope” until the winner is announced.

“Right now we’re in the position we wanted to be in,” said team member Kirk Brown, 18. “We think we did really well.”

Last year, Laguna Hills took second place in the nationals in Des Moines, Iowa, finishing just behind the state champions from Texas. The heartbreaking loss spurred a strong determination and a fierce desire for revenge this year. The Orange County scholars have spent hours preparing for the decathlon, poring over books and quizzing each other.

“I think they have an excellent shot at taking first place and I hope they do it to get revenge for us,” said Jeff McCombs, 19, captain of last year’s Laguna Hills team and a student at UCLA now.

Each school’s team had nine members from 11th and 12th grades during the two days of matching wits with champions from 44 state competitions and the District of Columbia. The students were tested on math, science, social science, economics, language and literature, fine arts and essay writing on Saturday; on Friday there was a speech and interviewing competition.

Each team is also broken up into three divisions by grade-point average--honors, scholastic and varsity--with the top two scores in each event counting toward the final score.

Laguna Hills has already beaten more than 80 teams this year at county and state levels to get to Saturday’s national competition.

“At nationals, we’re up against the best,” noted Sian Baker, 18, a senior competing in the nationals for the first time. “These are the people who really take it seriously.”

One indication that Laguna Hills was doing well came in Friday’s speech competition.

Out of more than 400 competitors, the top 13 were chosen to repeat their speeches Friday night and three were from Laguna Hills.

They were team captain Kim, 17, the top student in the honors level; George Danenhauer, 18, who placed first in the scholastic division; and Kirk Brown, 18, who picked up second place among the varsity contenders.

“To have two No. 1s and one No. 2 out of the entire United States is so exciting, you couldn’t have written a script for a better lead-in,” Gunderson said.

Kim’s win was particularly impressive because he arrived from a scholarship interview in Atlanta just 10 minutes before he was scheduled to give his speech.

“It was a great way to kick off the competition,” Gunderson said Saturday. “I think it really buoyed them up for today. And if their reaction after the first few events today was any indication, their level of confidence is reassuring.”

During breaks Saturday, Laguna Hills students gathered in the college square to tell their coaches how they thought they had done.

“I know I got them all right,” Kim said confidently after completing a math test Saturday morning. “If there’s any one I missed, dude, the answer key’s wrong.”

While many other teams munched on sandwiches and apples, most of the Laguna Hills kids skipped food to fill up on a few more facts.

“You always feel that you’re not quite ready so you want to cram a little bit more right before, just to make sure you know everything,” said Teddy Chen, 16.

The Laguna Hills team includes Kim, Chen and Ryan Sakamoto, 17, in the honors group; Todd Faurot, 17, Danenhauer and Baker in the scholastic group; and Robin Cheney, 16, and Brown in the varsity group. The team has only eight members because one student moved away during the year.