Moorpark High School Wins National Academic Decathlon

Moorpark High School won the national Academic Decathlon championship Sunday, becoming the first Ventura County school to take the top prize and maintaining California’s dominance of the premiere scholastic contest.

Moorpark High, which is also the first local school to compete in the national finals, beat teams from 38 other states, including its leading rival from Texas.

“I can’t comprehend the magnitude of what just happened,” said team member Ari Shaw. “I’m just ecstatic. This is a thousand times more intense than state.”

Last year’s national champ, El Camino Real in Woodland Hills, was knocked out of the running by Moorpark in the statewide finals in Stockton last month.

Moorpark’s decathletes scored 50,225 out of a possible 60,000 points in the 18th annual two-day competition, which tested students’ knowledge in topics ranging from algebra to ancient India.

Moorpark’s squad--Shaw, who is a junior, and seniors Arturo Barragan, Alexandra Dove, John Ellis, Valerie Lake, Nick Lange, Mitul Patel and Rebecca Wershba--jumped up and down and hugged each other when their school name was announced as the national champion.

Smiling, Barragan said, “It’s just the moment. There’s no past or future. Just the moment.”

As the decathletes made their way up to the stage--their many medals clanking around their necks--about 100 Moorpark parents, teachers and students held banners, applauded and screamed in unison: “You’re wonderful!”

Lake’s mother, Paula, said the team has really become a family. “They love each other so much and they’ve worked so hard,” she said. “They really deserve this.”

For nearly a year, the Moorpark students have been devoting their lives to preparing for the decathlon. They have taken more than 500 sample tests, rehearsed their speeches in excess of 100 times, done about 30 practice interviews and read both required novels four times each. During spring break, they studied for a cumulative 95 hours.

“It’s an amazing group of youngsters,” said history teacher Larry Jones, who has helped coached the team for seven years and said this is his last. “It’s been a dream to win, and the dream came true today.”

Winning is nothing new to Moorpark’s team. In February, they placed first in Ventura County’s contest and went on to take the state. But even though California teams have placed in the top three every year but one in the past 18 years, Moorpark did not expect to walk away with the top trophy.

During Sunday’s award ceremony at the West Coast Anaheim Hotel, the students and their coaches passed around several good luck charms, including a coconut, a teddy bear and a can of Spam.

Co-coach Michelle Bergman said she was worried, because Moorpark scored 2,000 fewer points than rival James E. Taylor High School of Katy, Texas, did in its qualifying state tournament.

But on Friday, Moorpark scored 379 points more than the Texas school, which placed second with 49,846 points. Catholic Memorial High School from Wisconsin placed third with 47,595 points.

About 400 students converged in Orange County on Wednesday for the national contest, a battle of brains and stamina. On Thursday and Friday, they wrote essays, gave speeches, participated in interviews, and took tests in economics, literature, social science, math, art and music.

During the exams, the students had to analyze poetry by Emily Dickinson, solve calculus problems and answer detailed biology questions about motor neurons.

On Friday, Moorpark students won the Super Quiz, a game-show-style oral event that required each student to answer five questions about the brain. After each correct answer, Moorpark fans cheered and waved pompoms.

In addition to being the top-scoring team in the nation, Moorpark also won the rookie award, given to the school competing at the national finals for the first time that racks up the highest number of points. Moorpark students also won dozens of individual scholarship awards in their divisions.

Each decathlon team includes students who have A, B and C grade averages, and all of Moorpark’s team members walked away with several medals.

Shaw earned the second-highest score among the A students, and Lake earned the third-highest score in that category. Wershba received the second-highest point total among the B students. Ellis received the highest score among C students, and Lange had the third-highest score in that category.

Moorpark’s team dominated both the music and art categories, with all of the students winning medals in both subjects. The team also placed first in the overall Super Quiz, which included both the oral and the written tests.

Jones said Moorpark’s performance was especially rewarding because of a decathlon controversy earlier in the day. He and several coaches were concerned because DemiDec, a company in Woodland Hills that produces decathlon study materials, also wrote numerous test questions.

Academic Decathlon Board President Arnold Oates said 39 questions were thrown out Sunday morning to create a level playing field among the teams, some of which may not have used DemiDec’s study guides. All the tests were rescored.

“In the best interest of fairness for all of the students, we decided to remove those questions,” Oates said.

Although the elimination of the questions may have lowered Moorpark’s score, Jones said that he would “rather lose with it being fair than win with it not being fair.”

Now that the Academic Decathlon is over, Moorpark team members said they plan to sleep, catch up on schoolwork and celebrate their victory.

“We’ve already gone to Disneyland,” Ellis said. “Now maybe we’ll go to the White House.”

As for the coaches, Jones said he plans to spend some more time with his family, and Bergman will start looking for next year’s decathletes.

The theme of the 2000 Academic Decathlon will be the “sustainable Earth,” and the national finals are planned in San Antonio.