Youths Match Wits at Academic Pentathlon : Education: The annual event attracts about 1,000 middle school students who tackle four subjects and a ‘Super Quiz.’ Results will be announced March 28.

After three months of arduous cerebral labor, 12-year-old Michelle Zylstra knows enough about meteorology to deliver the weather report on the nightly news.

Michelle can tell you the diameter of the average raindrop (1 millimeter); how a barometer works, and the types of clouds and their heights in the atmosphere.

“I crammed myself with more stuff than I ever wanted to know,” Michelle said.

Michelle’s efforts to learn meteorology were in preparation for the “Super Quiz,” a game show-like competition that highlighted Saturday’s 11th annual Academic Pentathlon for about 1,000 middle school students at Pacifica High School.

Students in 97 teams from 48 schools in Orange County and beyond competed in an obstacle course of the mind that began about 8 a.m., when the throng of teen-agers poured into the school’s parking lot.

They were tested in math, social science, literature and essay writing as well as the Super Quiz, a 10-question event that this year focused on the science of the atmosphere.

“The best part was the Super Quiz,” said Mike McKechnie, 12, seventh-grader at Lakeside Middle School. “Everything else was pretty much just sitting in a room and taking a test.”

Results of the competition will be announced March 28 at a ceremony at Anaheim High School.

The Super Quiz was held on the floor of the gym, amid festive banners and a cacophony of cheering and feet-stomping on bleachers. The noise at times grew so loud that volunteers had to raise “Quiet Please” signs and plead for silence.

On the floor, students sat in clusters of three while a question was projected on a screen before them. They discussed the question among themselves and marked their answers on a scanner sheet attached to a clipboard.

The academic tournament, a precursor to high school academic decathlons, drew the largest-ever crowd, said coordinator Sharon Nelson.

Most students took time off from lunch or stayed after school during the last few months to prepare for the event. Many groups held cram sessions Friday, although as Steve Bednar, 14, from Tuffree Middle School in Placentia, acknowledged to his parents afterward, “We didn’t study very well.”

Tuffree students donned T-shirts that they dyed themselves, with red, green, yellow and blue splashes. In another corner, a group of 10 students from the St. Michael’s College Prep School in Silverado Canyon were dressed in crisp white dress shirts accented by gold ties and blue blazers that featured their school emblem.

The purpose of the tournament is to encourage teamwork and academic improvement. But because the contest allows students of every grade level to compete against one another, it is also a chance for “students who usually never meet to meet,” Gibson said.

And when it was all over, they bade farewell and comforted one another. Michelle told one of her friends, “You know, the important thing is that we tried our best.”