Moorpark High School Snaps El Camino’s Hold on Academic Decathlon

El Camino Real High School, which won the national academic decathlon last year and the state championship for the past four years, lost its California title Sunday to rival Moorpark High School.

Not only did Ventura County’s Moorpark push the San Fernando Valley school into second place, but it beat five other teams from the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has a 20-year history of dominating decathlons.

Moorpark will represent California in the national decathlon next month at Cal State Fullerton.

In all, 50 schools competed in the two-day competition, which tested students’ knowledge in art, literature, math, music, social sciences and economics, plus essay writing, public speaking and interviewing.

At an awards ceremony Sunday at the University of the Pacific, decathlon officials announced that Moorpark scored 49,391 points out of a possible 60,000; El Camino earned 48,527; and Laguna Hills High in Orange County took third with 48,431 points.

Three other L.A. Unified schools scored in the top 10--with Belmont High placing seventh, Garfield at eighth and Los Angeles High in the No. 10 spot. Other top teams included Palos Verdes Peninsula High School and St. Francis in La Canada Flintridge.

“I’m happy for Moorpark,” El Camino team member Lisa Concoff said after the results were announced. “They’re our friends, but it’s also kind of disappointing because we worked so hard.”

“My stomach just dropped,” said Moorpark captain Nick Lange, who looked shellshocked as the media encircled him, flashing cameras and bombarding him with questions. “This is madness, one of the most nerve-racking experiences . . . but a good experience.”

Nerve-racking, indeed. Moorpark and El Camino were the two favored teams, and during the Sunday morning ceremony in which decathlon officials awarded individual students medals and $27,000 in scholarships, it became clear that the schools were close in their scores.

In the long minutes after decathlon officials announced Laguna Hill’s third-place finish, members of both teams shut their eyes, bowed their heads, clenched their fists and waited.

The results made both teams cry.

“I’m so happy, I don’t want to cry,” Moorpark’s co-coach Larry Jones said.

“I’m happy for Moorpark,” Mark Johnson, a coach for El Camino, said as he consoled and congratulated several sobbing students and held back his own tears. “I told them from Day One that this would be the greatest slug-out of all time, and I’m both happy and sad.”

El Camino senior Nancy Fu received a standing ovation for winning the top-scoring student in the honors division, an accolade she achieved at last year’s state and the last two city decathlons. At the nationals, she earned the second-highest score.