El Camino Makes It 4 Titles in Row

They did it again, big time.

For the fourth consecutive year, the El Camino Real High School team--the defending national champ--clinched the Academic Decathlon title for the Los Angeles Unified School District, it was announced Thursday at a downtown awards dinner.

The nine-member team from the Woodland Hills school will once again advance to the state competition next month.

But, to sweeten the victory, the team’s members also clinched several top individual decathlon medals, including top scorer overall to Nancy Fu, a 17-year-old senior from West Hills, for the second consecutive year.

“Winning the individual award is nothing compared to the team award,” Fu said. “One person can’t go on by themselves. The decathlon is very much a team event.”

“I’m so proud of how hard they worked,” said El Camino co-coach Mark Johnson. “Knowing last year’s team was the national champion, they had a lot of pressure. I think they handled it pretty well.”

The El Camino team was followed by Garfield and Belmont high schools. Los Angeles High School, which won the LAUSD’s heavily publicized “Super Quiz” on Saturday, fell to fourth place in the overall competition. Marshall High School came in fifth. Sixth was Palisades Charter High School.

All six top finishers advance to the state competition.

Earlier in the day, separate ceremonies honored teams from Palos Verdes Peninsula High School and Beverly Hills High School that placed first and second respectively among Los Angeles County schools outside the Los Angeles district. They also advance to the state competition.

The crowd of students, parents and faculty at the LAUSD ceremony at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles leaped to their feet and cheered as El Camino’s name was read.

El Camino earned a total of 48,980 points in the school district’s two-day intensive decathlon. El Camino has now won six local titles in the 19-year history of the event. The school, which also scored district victories in 1989-90 and 1991-92, already owns four state trophies and one national championship.

On Thursday, El Camino also added some individual victories to its record books.

Fu earned 8,750 points out of a possible 10,000, winning the top award in eight subjects from music to literature. She was followed by El Camino teammate Rajesh Jaganath and Andre Pop of Van Nuys High School.

The top scorer in the Scholastic Division (for students with grade-point averages between 3.0 and 3.74) was El Camino Real student Vadim Bendersky. Marshall High School student Ivan Potapenko placed second. Meeta Chakravarti, also of El Camino Real, placed third in the Varsity Division (GPA of 2.99 or lower).

The first-, second- and third-place individual scoring winners in each division received scholarships of $1,000, $750 and $500 respectively, donated by the Milken Family Foundation, officials said.

As part of the 10-event competition, students wrote essays and took exams on subjects from literature to math, economics and music, in addition to giving impromptu speeches and personal interviews. The decathlon culminated in the “Super Quiz,” a rapid-fire quiz-show type event.

El Camino placed fifth in the “Super Quiz,” but scored in the top three in the nine other decathlon events.

In the competition among county schools, the squad from Palos Verdes Peninsula High outscored 59 other teams, earning a total of 45,500 points, in their one-day, 10-event competition on Feb. 6.

The school’s team placed fourth last year, but took first-place honors in 1997.

“We’re in heaven,” said Roberta Kordich, who has coached the school’s decathlon team since 1981. “The goal now is to turn up the burners and see if we can go a little further and a little better.”

Right behind Palos Verdes was Beverly Hills High, which scored a total of 43,145 points.

Beverly Hills qualified for a trip to the state finals because its second-place score was high enough to gain an “at-large” berth.

Although only a few teams from Los Angeles will be advancing to the state competition taking place in Stockton on March 12-14, the mood among the non-advancing teams at Thursday’s lunchtime ceremonies in Montebello was upbeat, with even 26th-placing teams cheering each other on.

Members of the team from Burbank High School, placing fourth, decked themselves out in matador outfits complete with red capes, appearing as characters from the opera “Carmen,” which they were required to study.

They burst out in high-volume cheers and celebratory dances each time a student from their school won one of the more than 100 medals handed out.

“We reached our goal,” said 17-year-old Fabian Primera, a Burbank High School junior who earned a speech medal. “Our goal was to do our best, have fun, study, be together, be friends. Everything else was just a bonus.” A total of 50 teams will compete at the state level, with the winner advancing to the national Academic Decathlon in Fullerton on April 16-18.