Road Scholars

Armed with overstuffed boxes of study sheets and buoyed by the cheers of classmates, the whiz kids from El Camino Real High School on Tuesday boarded a bus bound for Utah and the chance to be national Academic Decathlon champs.

“I’m more or less freaking out right now,” said team member Steve Chae. “I think we’re ready; it just comes down to who’s the better team.”

More than 200 students and faculty crowded outside the school entrance to wish the nine decathlon team members and their two coaches well in their fight for the national title. With a 20-member band playing and a dozen cheerleaders chanting “E-C-R!” the 30-minute send-off seemed much like a pep rally for a winning sports team.

“This is a great moment for them,” said Joe Moses, who came to see off his daughter, team member Jackie Goldberg.

“We just want to give her as much support as we can. . . . She’s worked real hard, putting in 12-hour days for this,” said Moses, who will join the team in St. George, Utah, to lend moral support.

The El Camino Real team will be competing against a host of decathlon powerhouses from around the country in a series of tests, essays, speeches and interviews to be held Thursday and Friday. The popular Super Quiz, a raucous, fast-paced event similar to a College Bowl, will be held Friday and awards for the winning teams will be distributed in a closing ceremony on Saturday.

The El Camino team’s toughest competition probably will come from James E. Taylor High School in Katy, Texas, near Houston, which placed third in the national contest in 1995. Texas has turned out top Academic Decathlon teams for more than a decade and has been the one state to fiercely rival California teams.

But little of that was on the minds of El Camino’s team members Tuesday as the departing students and their coaches were swarmed by television cameras and well-wishers.

“I think it’s cool that they’re going out there, it’s a real honor, so I wanted to make sure I was here to cheer them on,” said senior Lourdes Cortez.

About a half dozen self-described “decathlon groupies” from El Camino are expected to make the eight-hour drive from Los Angeles to St. George to form the school’s boisterous cheering squad.

“It’s fun,” junior Oluwakemi Peters said. “They need the support where they go and we have signs and everything with us and that makes it a lot better.”

If the team wins, Oluwakemi said, the victory is as much for the school and all its students as it is for the actual winners. “We’re all living this out through them and what they’re doing is really great.”