Uni High Brain Trust Goes Up Against Best Students in State

The coach’s demands have intensified. Teachers have begun looking the other way as team members ditch class and blow off homework assignments. Even parents, caught up in the spirit, are relaxing the rules at home as their teen-agers practice at weird hours and stay up half the night.

Everything is focused on the coming weekend, when nine University High juniors and seniors will square off against schools across the state at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

But we aren’t talking sports here. Uni is going for a big win in the California Academic Decathlon. It will be the Westside school’s first trip to the state competition, although it has finished among the top three schools locally nine times in the past decade.

After losing in the Los Angeles district to El Camino Real by five points last year, University High benefits this year from a new state rule establishing a “wild card” spot for the highest scoring, non-winning team in California from a school with an enrollment of 1,000 or more. A San Diego school won a similar spot reserved for smaller schools.

Uni will compete against 45 other schools, including Woodland Hills’ Taft High, which won the L.A. district championship last fall. Taft won the state and national championships in 1989.

“We have the fifth-highest score in the state,” Uni Coach John Reece said.

Reece, who teaches English as a second language when he is not drilling his decathlon team, said the students are not usually excused from regular classroom requirements--except for this week.

“Where I want them is far away from me in the deepest stacks of the largest library they can find--studying,” Reece said. “They look at their (individual) city scores and try to shore up their weak spots.”

The decathlon theme this year is diversity, with Super Quiz questions focusing on 30 multicultural achievers ranging from cellist Yo Yo Ma to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. The events include essay writing, speeches (both prepared and impromptu) and interviews for more than five hours Friday, followed by seven hours of written tests in economics, science, math, language and literature, fine arts and social studies on Saturday.

The only event open to the public is Saturday afternoon’s Super Quiz.

Winners will be announced at an awards banquet Sunday.

Uni’s nine-member team is a Los Angeles mosaic as varied as the achievers members have been studying. They come from India, Korea, Iran and the United States. Two are juniors. Three are girls. As specified in the rules, there are three A students, three B students and three C students. Two are second-timers. Four are vegetarians. All were selected in October by a process that began last spring with evaluation by standardized tests, grades and teacher recommendations.

The team includes: Anshul Amar, Samidha Ghosh, Zanja Yudell, Mark Landsberg, Tai-Yong Park, Kelly Vogt, Sami Kohan, Rebecca Shoai and Toby Woods.

“They’re a really diverse group with many interests and achievements. Not a nerd among them,” Reece said. “Tai is a tae kwon do champion, Anshul is a violinist, Mark is an expert on comic books who both collects and reads them. Several have known each other since elementary school days at the Brentwood Science Magnet.

“They’re well-rounded kids who are attracted by the excitement of competition in the same way a football player would be attracted.”

The teen-agers agree, saying they are fired up by the competition and learning a lot in the process.

“In the public school courses, there haven’t been that many challenges,” said Samidha, 16. “This is an area where all can excel,” regardless of grade-point average.

She said the study guide used by the teams leads them into areas outside the standard curriculum, and this year’s focus on world figures “gives us a context for current events. I’ve learned a lot from the competition that is relevant to real life.”

Said Tai-Yong, 17: “Even if we don’t win, there’s so much learning I get out of this. There’s nothing in my regular courses that can offer the rewards the decathlon is offering me, such as the experience of the speech competition.”

Even though some do not earn above-average grades, all have shown great abilities on tests. Reece said some of the students put more emphasis on outside activities or are not motivated to get good grades. Some, however, have already completed so many advanced placement classes--beginning in junior high--that they have, in essence, completed their freshman year of college or more.

“I have crappy grades, but I also have a 1400 SAT score,” said Sami, 17. A member of the Uni team that narrowly lost last year in city competition, Sami added: “There was never a thought of giving up. The moment we lost, I’m like, OK, we’re gonna win next year.”

Since school started in August, the team has met daily for an hour during sixth period. As the competition nears, members have been staying after school, working afternoons, evenings and weekends. They have given speeches to teachers during lunch and nutrition breaks and have been interviewed by outsiders for practice. Even an academic decathlon coach from a neighboring Westside school has offered his help.

“They’ve been doing practically nothing else,” Reece said of his increasingly consumed students. “Sami’s been holed up in the library for weeks; Rebecca just gave a speech on women in combat roles in the military to teachers and students at lunch, and all of them did practice interviews last Saturday about their extracurricular activities, their personalities, their habits.”

The teen-agers use a variety of unusual and humorous mnemonic devices to remember specifics out of the staggering amounts of information they have ingested in a short time. “In chemistry, for example,” Reece said, “one girl was having trouble remembering that metals are characterized by giving off electrons. So she thinks of it as, ‘Loose girls often wear a lot of metal and give off electrons.”’

They have munched M & Ms, stepped up running and weights to relieve stress, bought new pens and notebooks, and watched themselves endlessly in the mirror and on videotape.

The coach says the team “ranges from high-strung to completely laid back. But even the most laid-back will be nervous as he approaches his chair at the Super Quiz. There’s no place to hide.”

Not that this weekend’s event is all cutthroat competition. After the students, coach and several sets of parent chaperons fly to Sacramento on Thursday afternoon and are shuttled to a motel near the university, there will be an ice cream social for all the teams.

There is a dance Saturday night, too, after the competition ends. Surely that will be fun?

Maybe, Reece said. “But the winners (of the California Decathlon) go to the national competition in Phoenix at the end of April. So either it will be all over, or we have five more weeks of studying to do.”