Spam and Eggheads

The students from El Camino Real High School may be loaded with learning, but Thursday they were counting on two secret weapons for success in the U.S. Academic Decathlon: mint Chapstick and Spam.

Before the Super Quiz on Saturday, the eight teenagers will draw the same waxy stick across each of their lips, just as last year’s team did.

The Spam? That’s a reverse incentive. They lose, they eat it. A can apiece.

“It has a shelf life of 10 years,” said junior Nancy Fu.

“It has a half-life of 10 years,” responded senior Mike Beatty.

The El Camino squad, which placed second nationally the past two years, isn’t the only decathlon team placing its faith in lucky charms and eccentric rituals as the competition gets underway today in downtown Providence.

True, students from El Camino and the other teams have spent months studying everything from great composers to the global economy. But in the eyes of many, a little good fortune might mean the difference between winning and losing. The defending national champion, James E. Taylor High School of Katy, Texas, proudly displayed a straw broom wrapped with blue and white ribbons, the school colors.

The otherwise ordinary household tool serves as a makeshift Aladdin’s lamp. It has all the power to guarantee the vaunted sweep, team members explain.

“Some people didn’t get it,” said senior Cheryl Hogan, whose mother decorated the broom. “We had to explain it to them.”

The Taylor team has a backup plan if the broom fails: horseshoe nails painted gold--for the color of first-place medals, of course. Each team member carries one of the 2-inch-long keepsakes in a pocket or wallet.

Such talismans came in all shapes and sizes, as varied as the states that sent students to compete.

Galen Spong, a junior from Shawnee Mission South High School outside Kansas City, Kan., carefully tucked a Donatello Pez dispenser into his jeans pocket. That’s Donatello as in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Jeff Villines of tiny Van Buren High School in Van Buren, Ark., served as his team’s own human talisman. The sophomore sings show tunes from “Bye, Bye Birdie” and “Fiddler on the Roof” during study breaks.

“I’m not superstitious,” insisted Villines, 16, as he prepared to launch into “If I Were a Rich Man” in a hotel room surrounded by his teammates.

*

The hometown team, The Wheeler School from Providence, sought divine intervention. The crew brought a 5-inch-tall bronze statuette of Ganesha, the Indian god said to remove obstacles from one’s path. The piece was a replica of one of the art objects studied by decathlon teams this year.

“Traditionally, you pray to the god to give fertility and success,” said junior Daniel Terry, as he played Chopin’s “Etude in G-Flat Major” on a piano next to the hotel’s elevators.

Hudson’s Bay High School from Vancouver, Wash., will have to rely on wit alone. Team member Clayton Hanson, 17, forgot the lucky stuffed eagle that has accompanied the school’s academic squads to other competitions for six years.

But coach Frances Duncan was fast at work on a locally purchased backup.

“I may invest and buy them a stuffed lobster,” said Duncan, who added that the team also brought along the principal and a student’s grandmother for good luck.

The students from the 38 decathlon teams may be bright and well-prepared, but some of them also are wildly superstitious.

On a boom box in one of their hotel rooms, the El Camino students listened to “Queen’s Greatest Hits” on Thursday. But they fast-forwarded past the second track on the CD: “We Are the Champions.”

Senior Steve Chae brought along a calendar with crude sayings, carefully ripping one day off at a time but refusing to look beyond the current date.

“You can’t go forward. It’s bad luck,” said Chae, 18.

“You’ll disrupt the space-time continuum. The universe will explode and will end as we know it.”

Like other team members, Chae removes his shoes when he takes the decathlon tests. He also prays before each exam, as does senior Carina Yuen.

“Whatever I’ve studied, just help me to remember. Help me to make wise choices,” Yuen said quietly in one of the team’s hotel rooms while working on yet another of countless multiple-choice practice tests. Then, closing her eyes, she added in a whisper: “Which letter looks better?”

But the El Camino students--and their coaches--were not about to fool themselves into relying on good luck. They had spent 50 hours a week in recent months preparing for the decathlon. And Thursday night would be no exception.

*

For one more night, they would put the cans of Spam away. Chae, keeper of the Chapstick, would keep the lip balm in his pocket.

And when the other teams scampered over to the State House for an ice cream social, the El Camino team would hit the books one more time.

“We never talk about victory,” said junior Fu, holding the stuffed platypus she will bring along today during her interview before a panel of three judges.

But then, with characteristic El Camino bravado, she said of archrival Taylor High: “We’re going to Spam them.”