El Camino Real Wins Academic Decathlon

Repeating last year’s win, El Camino Real High School of Woodland Hills 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 the team last year.

And to make victory even sweeter, team co-coach David Roberson was presented with the annual coach’s award at the district’s annual awards banquet.

“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.”

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

More than 1,000 academic decathletes, coaches, parents and friends attended the award banquet at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

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

The lineup of the top three winners in the Nov. 16 competition is a repeat of last year’s roster. El Camino’s team 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 winning nine-student team included Steve Chae, Michal Engleman, Robert Magee, Tamara Miller, Michael Montgomery, Jacqueline Moses, Roger Rees, Dawn Robinson and Adi Zarchi. .

El Camino Real will represent the L.A. district in the state competition at Cal Poly Pomona in March. Forty-two teams are expected to compete.

The state winner goes to the U.S. Academic Decathlon finals in Utah in April.

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.