L.A. High Moves to Head of the Class

An elated team of Los Angeles High School students earned a near-perfect score in the oral portion of the Super Quiz of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s academic decathlon Saturday, putting the school in a strong position to win the decathlon and qualify for the state championship in March.

The school’s eight-student team correctly answered 58 out of 60 questions about the global economy before a cheering crowd of 2,500 people packed into the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

The only San Fernando Valley school in the running after the Super Quiz portion was El Camino Real High, in third place. The Woodland Hills school’s team has won the last two state championships.

LAUSD administrators stressed that Saturday’s Super Quiz results were only tentative because a written test taken by each team member, and accounting for half the quiz scores, still had not been graded.

Final results of the Super Quiz--as well as the decathlon itself--will be announced Thursday.

But Los Angeles High students didn’t care about details Saturday night as they celebrated a long-sought victory. The school’s academic decathlon team took second place in the Super Quiz last year.

“It’s the best in the world,” junior Lucy Potiyevskaya, 16, declared as she and her teammates hugged one another.

Senior Ted Charles could barely contain his excitement.

“We just studied hard and we did it,” said Charles, 17.

Coach Jim Hatem offered his own gleeful analysis. “It just shows, you take a bunch of innocent kids and teach the old-fashioned way and they can compete with anyone,” he said as the team headed out for a pizza party.

The Super Quiz was one of 10 decathlon events LAUSD high school students competed in Saturday. They also delivered impromptu speeches, wrote essays and took a series of tests in art, literature, math, music, science and other subjects--all based on the decathlon theme, “Globalization: the new economy.”

Other public schools in Los Angeles County competed in their own decathlon--answering the same questions and on the same theme--as did private schools. The winners of the other decathlons also have yet to be announced. The winners move on to the state decathlon competition next month at Cal State Pomona.

The LAUSD students began the day of tests and interviews in the morning. By the time the Super Quiz began in the late afternoon, the contestants showed no signs of fatigue. They marched into the auditorium to the sounds of a marching band playing the “Olympic March,” as throngs of fellow students and parents in the audience held signs aloft and cheered for their favorite teams.

In all, 531 LAUSD students competed in Saturday’s event. Each team consisted of nine members, chosen from a range of grade point averages. One team member from Los Angeles High was declared ineligible because of low grades.

At the end of the oral portion of the Super Quiz, Los Angeles High had beaten out second-place Marshall High School in Silver Lake by one point. El Camino Real took third, scoring 54 out of 60. Belmont and Garfield high schools tied for fourth with 53 points each, and Huntington Park High School came in fifth with 52.

L.A. Unified teams have fared well at state and national decathlons in recent years.

Three years ago, Marshall won the state and national title. Besides winning the state championship in each of the last two years, El Camino Real claimed second place at the national event.