Local ‘Decathletes’ Take Test on Small-Town Stage

The town center is a church, its streets still boast more mom-and-pop shops than national chains, and at places like Dick’s Cafe, locals gather every morning at 7 for coffee and the latest gossip.

St. George is a small town, in case that isn’t clear yet, and it is precisely those small-town trappings--not to mention a stunning natural setting--that prompted the U.S. Academic Decathlon to hold its 16th national competition here.

More than 500 teenagers from 37 states, including the decathlon team from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, have converged on St. George this week for the grueling three-day tournament. And once the “decathletes” emerge from their intense rounds of oral and written tests, they will be near some of the country’s most glorious national parks, thanks to local boosters who organized the event.

“The national championship had been in big cities for so long that we wanted to show students what rural America looked like,” said Carla Brooks, co-founder of the Utah competition and a resident of St. George.

“The kids need to see the hills, the countryside and the red rock that you miss in those big cities,” Brooks said.

The El Camino kids, who won the California championship last month, drove into St. George on Tuesday, but have spent their time studying in their hotel rooms. The first series of tests in the 10-event brain-busting competition were held Thursday, and will continue today with the crucial Superquiz, a raucous, college-bowl-like event that often determines the final winner. The decathlon ends with an awards ceremony Saturday, rather than the traditional Sunday, because of the Mormon city’s strict observance of Sunday as a day of rest.

“The kids really haven’t seen much of anything,” said El Camino Real coach Dave Roberson as he ushered students back to their rooms. “We’ve just been having them study since we got here.”

Brooks lobbied hard for St. George to host the national competition, with a slick presentation before the U.S. Academic Decathlon board three years ago that beat out Providence, R.I. (Like the Olympics, each national decathlon is planned years in advance and who gets to host it is a competition in itself.)

But St. George is no stranger to guests.

With a location that puts it smack dab between Las Vegas and some of the west’s most glorious national parks, it has become a prime tourist stopover during the past 20 years. Many visitors, in fact, are returning to retire there.

“Once you get that red sand between your toes you just don’t ever want to leave,” said Jack Holt, 68, a St. George native who’s seen the place grow from a town of 2,100 in the 1940s to a city of 45,000 today.

The last weekend of every March, about 20,000 high school students from Utah and neighboring states descend on the city for their annual spring break with the requisite hourlong cruise down the one-mile stretch of St. George Boulevard. And every year from November to April, “snowbirds” escape the cold of northern Utah, Idaho and even Canada and make their way to St. George, expanding the city’s population by 25%.

“St. George is the poor man’s Florida,” said Brett Brown, who works for the city’s gas company. “People come for a visit, they like it, they come back a few more times and then they stay.”

Joe Reeves and his wife were annual St. George snowbirds for eight years, driving their RV from Pennsylvania in October and heading back east in May.

“We’d been going to Florida, but the climate here was much better,” said Reeves, 73, who moved to St. George in October and now volunteers at the Chamber of Commerce.

Reeves and his wife are among the thousands of senior citizens who have settled in St. George in the past five years, City Manager Gary Esplin said.

“We’re really like a Hilton Head of the west,” Esplin said, referring to the popular South Carolina resort town.

To enhance its resort attractions, city officials plan to build a 30-mile bike trail to extend to nearby Zion National Park, plus an aquatic center, a seven-field indoor softball complex, and an $18-million convention center by 1999.

But to locals, St. George will always be the little town settled by the Mormon followers of Brigham Young, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The town earned the nickname “Dixie,” after the Deep South, because Young urged his disciples to grow cotton to be financially self-sufficient.

Residents are so proud of that history and nickname that they’ve affixed the word “Dixie” to almost everything around--Dixie College, Dixie High School, Dixie Elementary. “Dixie” is even painted in large white letters against one of the many brilliant-red rocks that surround the city.

“Having the name ‘Dixie’ reminds us of that small-town feeling that we like to pride ourselves on,” Esplin said.