Taft High’s Team Earns Perfect Marks in Decathlon Final

A nine-student team from Taft High School in Woodland Hills won another trophy for California and the Los Angeles Unified School District on Saturday, earning a perfect score in the national Academic Decathlon’s Super Quiz.

Taft tied a team representing Massachusetts for first place in the high-stakes, game show-style quiz, the only decathlon event open to the public.

Although their Super Quiz marks do not ensure that the Woodland Hills students will win the 13th annual academic contest, it means they are strong contenders. Scores on the event’s other nine tests in the event will not be released until this morning’s awards banquet.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome,” said Andrew Salter, 17, as he hugged his parents after the quiz. “We have a very good chance of winning.”

Taft defeated teams from San Antonio, Tex., and Chicago, which the California team believed to be its biggest threats. Those schools took second and third place respectively.

The Massachusetts team from Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton, Mass., was not considered one of the top four teams going into the competition, based on its scores in their state’s competition. Massachusetts team members expressed as much surprise as pleasure after their tie with Taft was announced.

Taft won the national academic contest in 1989, came in second last year and has won the state title three times.

The Super Quiz is the last and most intense of the contest’s events. Each team sent one student at a time onto a gymnasium floor at Essex Community College to answer five oral questions, each worth 200 points. Scores are posted after every question for the student’s teammates, parents and competitors to see.

This year’s theme, “The Documents of Freedom,” tested students’ knowledge of excerpts from 19 documents, including the Gettysburg Address, the Camp David Accord and the May 16, 1989, declaration of the students who revolted in China’s Tian An Men Square.

On Friday, students representing 41 states and the District of Columbia wrote a 60-minute essay, gave a four-minute prepared speech, a two-minute impromptu speech and submitted to a seven-minute interview with a panel of judges. Then, before Saturday’s quiz, they took written tests in math, fine arts, economics, science, literature and social studies.

The Taft group was the last team to enter the gym for the quiz, using the precious few minutes after their final test for last-ditch study efforts or a chance to pace off the last-minute jitters.

As the Taft students walked into the building for their final event in the months-long process of studying and competing, 18-year-old Sheldon Peregrino paused, adjusted his unfamiliar necktie and took a deep breath.

“Here we go,” he said.

Peregrino was the second one in the hot seat. Neither he nor Chris Huie, 17, the student just before him, had missed a question.

“Which document states that every person has the right to own property?” the moderator asked. “One, the Magna Carta; two, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; three, the Great Law of Peace; four, the May 16 Declaration, or five, Pericles’ Funeral Oration.”

For each question, there was a painful, few seconds delay between the time correct answers were announced and the time scores were projected onto a screen. Some students saved their teammates the agony of waiting, such as the teen-agers from Mesa, Ariz., who waved a good luck stuffed bull in the air when they knew a teammate had answered correctly.

Like most of his teammates, Peregrino gave no indication of his standing, preferring to wait and let his teammates see for themselves. The correct answer was No. 2, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the team would soon learn that Peregrino knew it.

After every correct answer, supporters in the gym grandstands whooped and howled their team’s name. No group, including the team from the host state of New Jersey, had as much enthusiasm as the 68-person entourage that accompanied the Taft team.

They wore signature red “GO TAFT!” sweat shirts--which debuted last year during the Los Angeles district’s competition and were reprised at the state competition in Stockton last month.

After the victory, as the students made plans to build bonfires with their study aids and party through the last months of their senior year, Emily Sears Vaughn rejoiced with the other parents.

“I’m so proud and I’m so relieved,” she said. “Now they can go back to being normal, impossible teen-agers.”

Also competing for Taft were: Daniel Berdichevsky, 17; Michael Michrowski, 17; Rebecca Rissman, 17; Sage Vaughn, 17; Kimberly Shapiro, 16, and the team’s only junior, Stephen Shaw, 16.