Moorpark Students Snag County’s Decathlon Championship--Again

It could have been the monogrammed shirts or the sprigs of brain-stimulating parsley. Or maybe Moorpark High’s students are just smarter than everyone else in the county.

Whatever it was, for the second straight year, Moorpark bested 12 other Ventura County high schools Saturday to win the county’s 1999 Academic Decathlon.

Moorpark’s A and B teams took first and second respectively, with Simi Valley High School’s A, Adolfo Camarillo High School’s A and Simi’s B teams rounding out the top five.

“The kids worked really hard,” said Moorpark coach Larry Jones, a world history teacher.

With its countywide win, Moorpark’s A team advances to the statewide competition in Stockton in March. Runners-up could also advance as wild-card teams, depending on how their scores stack up against other schools statewide. Those spots will be doled out next week, though B teams are not eligible.

Now in its 18th year statewide, the academic decathlon is a 10-event scholastic competition for teams of high school students. This year, on Jan. 9 and Saturday, about 160 students from 13 Ventura County public schools competed.

Students earned points in essays, interviews, speeches and written tests in math, language and literature, music, economics, social studies and art.

Capping the decathlon Saturday was the “Super Quiz,” a multiple-choice test taken before a pompom waving crowd. All of this year’s questions related to the human brain.

Cheering from the stands of the Oxnard High School gymnasium were many parents whose wunderkinder battled over the brain from desks on the parquet floor.

Two of Moorpark’s team mothers, Tobey Shaw and Leanne Marlier, followed their children’s team this year with tote bags full of puzzles, decks of cards, binders of study materials and three kinds of throat drops. Coolers held orange juice and bottled water.

“We are a resource for the kids on anything they need,” said Marlier, a physical therapist who helped the students learn about the brain. “If a girl’s having a bad hair day, we’re there to help out with that.”

During the Super Quiz, Shaw kept score on her program and was visibly nervous for her son, Ari, and his team of defending champs.

“They have worked their butts off,” she said.

Moorpark’s B team won the Super Quiz, followed by its A squad.

In individual competition, Adolfo Camarillo’s Dennis Hsieh had the highest overall score, followed by Moorpark’s Mitul Patel and Valerie Lake.

For all the academic decathletes, Saturday was the end--at least for a while--of hundreds of after-school hours and weekends spent prepping for the competition.

Each team must field members of all academic abilities--A, B and C students. Ventura County Supt. of Schools Chuck Weis, the Alex Trebek of Saturday’s Super Quiz, said that rule is one of the best of the decathlon.

“By the time they finish this, the C-average students become B-average students or better,” Weis said, “so each year we have to recruit a new group of C-average students.”

Moorpark and its biggest rival, Simi, were favored to win this year’s decathlon. One of the two schools has won since 1993.

This year, Simi had a tough time with the written tests, coach Ken Hibbitts said. An economics teacher, he thought some of the questions on the econ test were more suited to graduate students than high schoolers.

“The scores probably are not going to be as good for all the teams,” said Hibbitts, who was hoping his team would capture a wild-card spot.

Though they did not win any major awards, Newbury Park High School’s decathletes said they were the most spirited team and didn’t participate for a trophy.

“I wanted to get interested in other things and that’s what happened,” said Jacqueline Allen, who after learning about opera for the decathlon, surprised herself by buying her first operatic CD.

Allen’s teammate Doran Harney had other goals.

“Maybe one day I can use the skills I learned to take over the world,” said Doran.