Runners-Up Miss Action of Academic Decathlon

After months of study for a high-pressure contest, members of the West High School academic decathlon team are faced with a lingering question: Now that they have placed second in this year’s statewide competition, what will they do to fill the time?

“Now that it’s all over, you sort of miss it already,” said Douglas Kunz, 17, the West High senior who emerged as the top-scoring student last weekend at the 13th annual California Academic Decathlon.

“I’m not going to know what to do with myself,” said Stephanie Haussmann, 18, another high-scoring senior on the nine-student team from West High in Torrance.

After a year of study, the team learned Sunday it had taken second place in the state decathlon--up one notch from its third-place finish last year.

First place went to El Camino Real High School of Woodland Hills, which earned 48,610 points. West High accrued 46,974 points, finishing ahead of Laguna Hills High School from Orange County, the state champion for the past two years.

West High team members seem undaunted that they did not take first place. They tasted victory in November when they topped 68 other teams to win the Los Angeles County championship. That sent them on to the state contest in San Bernardino to compete against 45 other teams. El Camino Real High made it to the state event by winning the Los Angeles Unified School District competition.

“We were really happy with what we did,” said Haussmann, who will attend Caltech next year and wants to study marine biology. “We were behind by enough points that it wasn’t a heartbreak loss, but (El Camino Real) didn’t blow us out of the water, either.”

West High came home with 34 medals and what Coach George Floratos describes as “a trophy that takes up about half a desk.” And several of its team members scored especially high. Haussmann ranked fifth in the state, while junior Nikhil Chanani, 16, ranked fourth, Floratos said.

Kunz, who earned 8,779 points to become the highest-scoring student, says he was aided by spending two years on the team.

He hopes to attend Stanford University to study engineering and believes that his decathlon training will serve him well in college: “Decathlon is like taking 10 additional courses in addition to what you’re doing with your regular schoolwork.”

Both Kunz and Chanani said the decathlon exposed them to the fine arts. Chanani said that before his training, “I couldn’t say that’s Impressionist, that’s Cubist. To me, a painting was a painting.”

Floratos, a West High biology teacher who has coached the team for five years, deserves special credit for their success, team members said.

“He’s really good at motivating. He’s not accepting of halfway effort, and everyone knows that,” Haussmann said.

It was important that Floratos did not force his team to cram in the final days before the state contest, Chanani said. Students spent last Thursday night watching the movie “The Princess Bride,” and Floratos discouraged them from taking books to San Bernardino.

“We never really had problems with people burning out,” Chanani said. “He keeps it so loose for us, and at the same time, we’re getting things done.”

Floratos said he doubts the usefulness of last-minute cramming.

“I told them, ‘You’ve put in more than 1,000 hours on this thing--try to relax,” Floratos said. “They should just go in and have fun.”