They’re the Brains Behind the Brains

Dan Spetner knows something about motivating students. In fact, he almost got arrested for it. While coaching Academic Decathlon students at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles several years ago, he had three run-ins with police. “They kept busting into my classroom because the lights were on at 3 a.m. They couldn’t believe we were studying, not vandalizing.”

His decathlon win record is testament to his technique, and today he’s the coach’s coach. He has inspired an impressive legacy, most notably showing the way for the coaches of the Academic Decathlon teams at El Camino Real High School and Taft High School, both in Woodland Hills, and Marshall High School in Los Feliz.

Collectively, over the past 15 years, these three schools have earned 10 city, eight state and four national championships (out of 3,000 schools). This year’s district winner, El Camino Real, is set to add one more state championship to the record in March, when the heavily favored team competes in the state finals.

You can attribute such dominance largely to one factor: coaching. Anyone can have a dream team once, but to consistently motivate a wriggly handful of 17- and 18-year-olds to trade their leisure hours to cram for months, so they can sweep the decathlon’s 10 mind-churning tests, takes more than a fluke. Sure, these kids are burning their behinds, but the coaches are kindling the fire.

Spetner, now president of Acalon, a company that distributes decathalon prep materials, says the trait they share is obsession. “These coaches may look normal, but trust me, they’re obsessed.”

“Once you accept the job as coach, it’s all you think about 365 days a year. You live it, you breathe it, you sleep it,” said Dave Roberson, co-coach of the El Camino Real team, a former national champion.

The point all the coaches make is that a winning team has nothing to do with how privileged the student body is or how high the SAT scores are. What matters is commitment. Rene Rickard, Taft coach of two years who has placed third in the district out of 59 schools both years, likes to quote one of Spetner’s adages: “You give me a school with 3,000 kids, and I will find nine to coach to medals.”

Meet the attitude busters. It’s not cool to be smart. I’d rather play sports. But I want to see my girlfriend. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

These coaches have angles around all the obstacles, the biggest often being school itself. “Usually these top kids are also the ones other program directors want in drama, mock trial, sports, French club and band,” said Phil Chase, coach at Marshall, who in his five years there has lead teams to one national championship and three second places in the city. “It’s a big fight.” Plus, it’s not cool on all campuses to be seen as a brain, so kids don’t exactly line up for the casting call.

But, Chase added, “There’s a moment when they buy it, and then our job is easy.” Getting there, however, is a struggle.

“Up to a point, they’re kids like any others, with lots of distractions,” said Sharon Markenson, co-coach with Roberson at El Camino Real, “and we’re trying to get them focused on a goal.” So they create a vision, telling their young recruits that this is the best thing they can do right now with their lives. Participating can have huge academic payoffs.

Spetner used to tell his charges to imagine themselves after the competition at the awards banquet. “ ‘Are you onstage getting a medal or in your chair eating dessert?’ If I could get them to look ahead, to picture actually winning the medal and the smiles on the faces of parents, coaches and classmates, then they would study harder.”

To pick teams with the right stuff, coaches pore over student files, checking test records and GPAs. They are looking for the bright and motivated, or at least “motivatable.” They want kids with across-the-board abilities, as the decathlon involves tests on a variety of subjects, an essay, an impromptu speech and the Super Quiz, in which team members answer questions on a pre-selected topic before a live audience. The nine-member team consists of three each of A, B and C students.

Picking the honors and scholastic competitors is easy. More difficult is finding that C varsity player. “We look for a C average and a PSAT [Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test] of 1,600 [the highest possible score],” joked Chase.

Come summer, when most kids would rather do anything but study, these kids are cramming 10 to 15 hours a day. So what advice do these motivation mavens have for parents who would like to rev up their own children’s study habits? “Stay on them,” Markenson advised. “Parents think by high school they’re done. They stop coming to back to school night and stop coming to the extracurricular activities. Parents need to be there and to continue to set expectations, because once they let up, the kids are gone.”

Spetner’s advice is to encourage competition and never give false praise. “Some teachers don’t like spelling bees because it hurts some kids’ feelings. I believe they push everyone to a higher standard. Kids want to be pushed.”

He also stresses honest praise for real accomplishment. “The big buzz word today is ‘self-esteem.’ If you keep telling someone they did something great when they didn’t, that doesn’t raise self-esteem. Kids know the difference.”

Spetner points to the teams he coached during six years at Dorsey. Those kids won four Super Quiz championships, one second place Super Quiz, one third place Super Quiz and always placed among the top five schools citywide overall. “These kids had tremendous self-esteem because they accomplished something.”

But even winning coaches concede frustration. “Kids wander,” Roberson said, recalling one team member who, of all the nerve, got a girlfriend and kept disappearing. Roberson tracked him down in the rain. “By luck I found him with her by her car. I said, ‘You have a commitment much greater than this.’ He came around.”

Another frustration is the pay. The coach’s stipend comes to about $1,700 a year. No more if he or she wins. As Rickard put it, “Most of the stipend goes back to the team. I put that and more just into snacks.”

Markenson rationalizes the low monetary reward this way: “I used to feel guilty that I couldn’t give more to charity. Now I don’t. I’m giving my life.”

So it consumes your life, the odds are long and the pay is lousy. Why do it?

“It’s teacher heaven,” Markenson said. “Here are nine bright, highly motivated young people focused on a goal, and you have an unlimited amount of time to work with them.”

Chase speaks of a different kind of reward. He recalls one young woman he coached several years ago at Washington High School. She lived with her mother and brother in a rather unstable home. The mother disappeared, and Chase became the woman’s guardian for a while.

“She couldn’t read or speak much above average,” Chase said, “but she had a lot of courage and determination.” She won six medals in that year’s competition. Last June, she called him to let him know she’d just received her double doctorate from Kent State University in Ohio.

“ ‘Every so often,’ ” he said, quoting John Steinbeck, “ ‘a kind of glory lights up the mind of man.’ I guess that’s why.”