El Camino Real High Wins Super Quiz

The El Camino Real High School academic decathlon team won the annual Super Quiz competition Saturday night, placing the Woodland Hills school in good position to hold onto its title as Los Angeles Unified School District champions.

Last year, the school’s team went on to capture the state academic decathlon title.

Second place in this year’s Super Quiz went to Los Angeles High School and third to Garfield High School of East Los Angeles.

The contest marked only the second time in a decade that at least one of two former national decathlon winners--Taft High School of Woodland Hills and Marshall High School of Los Feliz--did not finish among the top three schools in the Super Quiz.

The grueling quiz is the final event in the daylong city academic decathlon, and is the only part of the competition open to the public.

The final results of this year’s city decathlon will not be announced until Nov. 26, after the results from the full day’s roster of essay writing, speech giving and other events, in addition to the Super Quiz, are tallied.

But the winner of the quiz is traditionally viewed as the front-runner. When Super Quiz results were announced Saturday, they brought cheers from El Camino team members and hundreds of fellow students, friends and family members gathered for the event at Los Angeles Sports Arena.

“I’m ecstatic,” said El Camino team member Robert Magee. “It makes all the work worth it.”

In addition to the LAUSD contest, 60 public schools from Los Angeles County competed in a separate decathlon won by Alhambra High School.