The Answer: 2nd Place

In a close race between tournament powerhouses, El Camino Real High School of Woodland Hills tied for second place Friday in the U.S. Academic Decathlon Super Quiz, finishing just behind a fierce Texas squad in the rowdy game-show-like event.

El Camino’s team correctly answered 39 out of 45 questions, tying with Illinois and narrowly edged out by Texas, which correctly answered 41 questions in its fight to capture that state’s second straight national decathlon title.

Tennessee placed third in the Super Quiz with 38 correct answers, each worth 100 points.

The close finish once again places California, Texas and Illinois in the running for the top finishers in the overall contest, whose championship goes to the team that earns the most out of a possible 60,000 points. All three states finished in the top three slots in the 1995 competition, with California capturing that title.

Texas and California traditionally have been archrivals in the prestigious academic contest. In fact, they are the only two states to ever win the U.S. decathlon in the competition’s 16-year history.

“We’re feeling good, but we could officially be right on the line because last year we lost to Texas by only 200 points,” El Camino “decathlete” Mike Montgomery said of his team’s performance. The decathlon’s outcome will be announced at an awards luncheon today.

Although the winner of the Super Quiz normally goes on to sweep the title, there have been exceptions. El Camino won last year’s Super Quiz relay but finished second overall to Frank Dobie High School in Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of Houston.

But El Camino coach Dave Roberson said the Woodland Hills teens still may have a fighting chance.

“We’re in the hunt,” Roberson said of the team’s battle with Texas for the No. 1 slot. “It’s going to be hard to make up those points in the overall scoring, but there’s still hope.”

El Camino’s team is hoping to snatch the U.S. title--which California so closely lost last year--away from Texas as a tribute to Roberson and fellow coach Sharon Markenson, who are ending their four-year run leading the team.

Friday’s Super Quiz, which followed two days of tests in 10 subjects, was the last round in two days of exhausting mental combat for the 333 students who participated in this year’s national decathlon.

In a packed theater on the Dixie College campus here, the nine El Camino students battled against teenagers from 36 other states, tackling questions on the history of the computer age. Each student was asked five questions, each worth 100 points. Six El Camino students missed one question each, and the disappointment was evident on their faces as they emerged from the theater at the end of the Super Quiz.

“They know how important every point is--100 points a question--and it hurts when they miss,” Markenson said.

Senior Michal Engelman took a while before she barely broke into a smile. “I feel kind of bad because the question I missed I had the right answer to and then second-guessed myself,” she explained.

Michal and her teammates were instantly greeted by more than 30 enthusiastic relatives, school officials and classmates who either drove or flew to this small town in southwestern Utah to cheer the team on.

Despite nailing a perfect score with five correct answers, junior Steve Chae slouched against a wall, looking down at his feet with a sullen face.

“There’s this hope and everything that we could win [the overall contest],” Steve said, “but it would’ve been nice if we could’ve won Super Quiz.”