West Is Best Again in Battle of County Academic Decathlon : Education: Torrance team now prepares for state championship March 6-8 at Cal State San Bernardino.

The awards ceremony was running at full throttle. Throngs of students trooped to the stage amid loud applause to receive medals for individual achievement in the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon.

But at the West High School table, most students weren’t smiling.

The Torrance school’s decathlon team was reaping dozens of the Olympic-style medals, which hung heavy around the teen-agers’ necks on ribbons of red, white and blue. But a rival school--William S. Hart High School of Newhall--was collecting plenty of medals of its own.

So they waited, apprehensively, for news of who would win the championship.

“It’s close. I brought my whistle just in case,” said the mother of one West High team member as she gripped a small plastic whistle in her hand.

Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School took fourth place. The crowd cheered and yelled. Glen A. Wilson High School of Hacienda Heights took third.

And then came the news that West High was waiting for: Hart High School had won second place, leaving the top spot for West. After a stunned silence, West High’s team embraced and then applauded for Hart.

And finally, the West High team marched to the stage as the audience of more than 1,000 gave the students a standing ovation at the Tuesday night awards banquet at the Quiet Cannon restaurant in Montebello.

And at least one mother whistled loudly.

The honor meant that West High topped 68 other teams in the county decathlon, held Nov. 16 in San Gabriel, for its second consecutive county championship. But only one member of last year’s team returned this year; the other eight members were new to the process.

In the end, West High earned a total of 44,911 points, edging out Hart by 232 points. Wilson High School was close behind with 44,010 points.

“We knew their score but not ours,” said West High team member Stephanie Haussmann, 17. “I didn’t want to give us up for lost, but I didn’t think we’d win.”

“Oh, man, I was worried. Hart was strong,” admitted the team’s coach, biology teacher George Floratos. “Too many numbers were flipping through my mind the whole evening.”

The top-scoring student was Hart High’s Kevin Armstrong, with 8,616 points. He posed for photographs after the event, his chest laden with medals.

Four of the 12 top-scoring students in the county came from West High. Gene Chuang was the school’s top scorer with 8,250 points. He was followed by Nikhil Chanani with 8,249 points, Douglas Kunz with 8,167 points and Miles Elam with 6,660 points.

In all, the team won 37 individual medals.

The county decathlon is the largest of its kind in the nation. It rewards students, not for athletic prowess like many school contests, but for academic achievement.

The competition, for high school juniors and seniors, is made up of 10 events--written exams in six academic areas, essays, speeches, interviews and a game-show-style contest called the Super Quiz.

Each event has a potential 6,000 points, meaning that a perfect score for the decathlon would be 60,000.

West High won the Super Quiz this year, but the total points won by each team were not made public until Tuesday.

For exuberant team members, the work is not over. This week’s victory means the team has to gear up to study for the state championship March 6-8 at California State University, San Bernardino. Floratos wants to pay special attention to the team’s essay writing--one of only two areas where it didn’t win a medal.

But first members will get a brief reprieve when they go together Dec. 7 to see the cult hit “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”--as they promised to do months ago if they won the championship. Their coach plans to accompany them, students said.

Some West High parents made a point of singling out Floratos for motivating their children and paving the way to the championship.

Said Nien-Ling Wayman, mother of team member Peter Wayman: “He makes the whole school get behind them, so it’s really a team.”

L.A. County Academic Decathlon Winners 1. West High School, Torrance 2. Hart High School, Newhall 3. Wilson High School, Hacienda Heights 4. Mira Costa High School, Manhattan Beach 5. Claremont High School, Claremont Other South Bay schools: 11. Peninsula High School, Rolling Hills Estates 12. North High School, Torrance 21. Torrance High School, Torrance 30. Redondo Union High School, Redondo Beach 33. Leuzinger High School, Lawndale 36. South High School, Torrance