Alemany High Wins Student Decathlon

For the second consecutive year, a team of students from Bishop Alemany High School has won the Southern California Private Schools Academic Decathlon.

The team of juniors and seniors will now prepare for the state finals to be held in March at Cal Poly Pomona, said Janie Prucha, an English teacher and the decathlon coach at the Mission Hills school.

“These students dedicated themselves to the decathlon. They began six months ago, worked through the summer, and now it has really paid off,” Prucha said.

On Saturday at Pius X-St. Matthias High School in Downey, the Alemany team took first place in the decathlon’s ultimate event, the Super Quiz, and performed well enough in the other nine events to finish on top overall.

“It’s a great feeling to do so well,” said Alemany junior Walter Richter, who achieved the highest individual score at the event. “It was a lot of hard work. The last six weeks I studied six hours a day. But it was also a lot of fun.”

“A lot of students have the ability to do well, but only a select few have the drive that winning the decathlon requires,” said Sharon Veenhof, a science teacher at Alemany and advisor to the decathlon team. “It takes incredible discipline.”

Several Alemany students said the event was important not only because of the knowledge they gained, but also for the friendships they made among their teammates and the pride they now feel at seeing their hours of studying pay off.

“Before I got involved with this I was slacking off in school; I didn’t think I could do any better,” said senior Ryan Cortina. “After doing all this work for the decathlon I have a lot more confidence.”

In addition to Walter and Ryan, the Alemany team included Penelope Ceja, Sarah Goyak, Stephanie Guilbault, Jennifer Nuckolls, John Sitko, Brian Van Dyk, Katherine Oro, Gabriella Alecse and Ryan Songco.