Academic Decathlon Returns to Its Orange County Roots

The 26 nondescript boxes, sandwiched in a Santa Ana garage between an aging washing machine and an oversized bag of weedkiller, may be the most closely guarded items in all of Orange County.

“They are under my watchful eye,” said Judy Combs, in whose garage the boxes sit. “They will be until Wednesday morning.”

Combs is the California director of the U.S. Academic Decathlon. The boxes hold the questions for the national competition, which is being held this year in Orange County. The safekeeping of the test questions is just one of myriad last-minute tasks being attended to by nine staff members and more than 300 volunteers before Wednesday’s start of the competition.

This year’s finals represent a homecoming for the contest, which has evolved into what many consider the premier academic competition in the country. The decathlon began in Orange County in 1968 as the brainchild of county school Supt. Robert Peterson, who wanted to create a program that would motivate students of all ability levels to excel.

The first decathlon brought together a small group of local high schools in an Anaheim auditorium. Today, more than 35,000 students participate from almost 2,500 schools nationwide.

The decathlon itself has remained largely unchanged over the years, with students tested over a range of academic topics and judged in speech and interview categories. The SuperQuiz portion, a kind of academic relay race, was added in the decathlon’s second year to provide a championship feel to culminate the event.

In 1981, the U.S. Academic Decathlon Assn. was formed and the first national final was held. The decathlon has since become a booming enterprise.

A full-time staff of seven in the decathlon’s Los Alamitos national headquarters handles a $1.2-million annual budget, directed toward development of a yearly curriculum and the questions asked in the various tiers of competition, as well as putting on the national finals.

A 28-member board of directors sets policy for the nonprofit organization. Eleven corporations are listed as sponsors of the national finals.

Each participating school pays $495 to outfit a team with study guides, a CD, an online practice test service, discounted novels, a full-color art booklet and an opera compendium.

As for the students, they pay with their blood, sweat and tears. Team members from Moorpark High School, this year’s California state champion, have been drilling for 12 hours a day during their spring break in preparation for the event.

“We’re trying to keep an even keel,” said history teacher Larry Jones, who has coached Moorpark’s team for seven years.

Jones has drawn complaints from other coaches for being too intense. Even he admits that his team’s marathon preparation is a little “nuts.”

Other teams, however, are no doubt doing the same thing, he said.

Indeed, teams regularly spend up to 50 hours a week reading novels and poetry, writing essays, listening to music selections and delivering speeches.

An oft-repeated story in Academic Decathlon lore is that of 19-year-old Heather Gipson, a member of a team from Orange Glen High School in Escondido. Two years ago, she postponed her second surgery for a cancerous brain tumor to compete in the state finals.

Later, at the national finals in April 1997, she received special honors for her courage.

Come Friday, the unassuming stack of booklets boxed in Combs’ garage, containing questions on everything from art to economics to literature, will have caused immeasurable heartache and headache for more than 400 students.

By then, they will have sweated through four hours of testing, interviews and a nail-biting SuperQuiz final, with just one team emerging victorious.

The decathlon’s avid supporters say the competition is responsible for inspiring thousands of high school students, especially some underachievers, to learn.

Part of Peterson’s original vision for the competition was to motivate underserved students.

“In education, we pretty much overlooked programs that motivate the below-average and average student,” Peterson said in a recent interview. The retired superintendent now lives in North Carolina. “Have you ever heard of an honor roll for C students?”

Along those lines, each decathlon team is required to have three students with A averages, three B students and three C students.

“It’s in the C students that we see the most wonderful results,” Combs said.

This year for the first time a creative problem-solving competition is being held in conjunction with the finals, with 20 teams from across the country participating.

The problem-solving competition was implemented in response to critics who said too much of decathlon success was a product of rote memorization, as opposed to critical thinking skills.

“Problem solving in education is really big right now,” said James Alvino, the decathlon’s national director. “We think we’re really cutting-edge in pushing this program forward.”

The competition will be held at four locations: Cal State Fullerton, Troy High School in Fullerton, Grace Community Center in Cypress and the West Coast Anaheim Hotel. The national Academic Decathlon champion team will be announced next Sunday during an awards ceremony at the hotel.

For Combs, who has put in 10- and 12-hour days over the last month to prepare for the event, the announcement will be the culmination of an entire year’s work.

“I cry when I see kids are happy and I’m happy,” she said. “I cry at every award ceremony.”