El Camino Wins LAUSD Academic Decathlon

Repeating last year’s win, El Camino Real High School swept the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Academic Decathlon on Tuesday and advanced to the state contest, renewing hope for another stab at the national title that eluded its team last year.

The victory sends El Camino Real of Woodland Hills to the state championship for the fourth time.

To make the victory even sweeter, co-coach David Roberson was presented with the annual Coach’s Award at the district’s annual awards banquet Tuesday.

“I never expected this,” Roberson said. “As the coach at El Camino, I inherited a wonderful coaching staff. I’m just trying to keep that going and improve on it.” Roberson, a history teacher at the school who has coached the team for the past four years, shared the credit with co-coach Sharon Markenson.

The students from the Woodland Hills school erupted in cheers and shrieks as district officials announced their victory at the banquet in downtown Los Angeles. More than 1,000 academic decathletes, many in suits and evening dresses, along with parents, coaches and friends attended the banquet at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

El Camino’s team won the Super Quiz portion of the city schools competition this month, and the Super Quiz victor is traditionally the front-runner in the overall results.

The lineup of the top three winners in the Nov. 16 competition repeated last year’s roster. El Camino easily moved to the top with 48,914 points out of a possible 60,000, outscoring its nearest competitor, Marshall High School of Los Angeles, by more than 2,900 points. Taft High School, also of Woodland Hills, again took third place with 45,664.

The 10-event battle of the brains tests high school students’ mastery of six subjects ranging from economics to fine arts, plus an essay, a speech, a personal interview and participation in the Super Quiz, a raucous and intense “College Bowl”-type event.

The nine-student winning team included Steve Chae, Michal Engleman, Robert Magee, Tamara Miller, Michael Montgomery, Jacqueline Moses, Roger Rees, Dawn Robinson and Adi Zarchi.

El Camino’s team also proved its mental muscle in several individual events in the citywide competition. The team took first place in six of the 10 events, including economics, math and speech, and also boasted the most top-scoring individual students.

Miller and Zarchi took the two top honors in the individual scholastic category. Marshall’s Taeryn Kim was third. In the varsity division, the top three spots went to El Camino’s Magee, Montgomery and Rees.

The Woodland Hills team will represent the LAUSD in the state competition at Cal Poly Pomona in March. Forty-two teams from across the state are expected to compete. The state winner will compete in the U.S. Academic Decathlon finals in Utah the following month.

With its fourth trip to the state competition assured, El Camino Real has cemented its status as one of the Academic Decathlon’s perennial powers. Taft High has also made it to the state contest four times and Palisades High has competed five times at the state level.

Last year, El Camino’s whiz kids edged out the competition to win the state decathlon, then lost the nationwide tournament by only 285 points.

Also competing in the state competition will be Alemany High School of Mission Hills and Beverly Hills High School, both of which are back-to-back winners.

Beverly High won a separate decathlon competition, held earlier this month, for Los Angeles County public schools that are outside the LAUSD. Alemany, which won the competition for private and parochial schools, placed ninth last year among the 42 schools in the state decathlon.