Moorpark High Is Tops in State Decathlon

For the first time in California Academic Decathlon history, a Ventura County school--Moorpark High--has won the state title.

Sunday’s victory came after Moorpark beat El Camino Real High School, last year’s national winner and a four-time state champion.

Moorpark, which until the middle of February thought that it had two teams eligible to compete at the state level, will advance to the national championship next month at Cal State Fullerton. Moorpark was ranked No. 2 after last year’s statewide contest.

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

Moorpark seniors John Ellis and Rebecca Wershba each won $1,200 scholarships for achieving the top overall scores in the varsity and scholastic divisions.

“My stomach just dropped,” said Moorpark’s team captain, Nick Lange, who looked shellshocked as the media circled around 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 in the two-day championship round, and during the ceremony--in which decathlon officials awarded individual students medals and a total of $27,000 in scholarships--it became clear that the schools’ scores would be close.

In the stands, hundreds of parents, teachers and administrators tallied points on scorecards, bit their nails and whispered to one another, trying to guess which team would win the state title.

Members of the two teams, seated at tables near each other at the awards ceremony, nervously smiled at one another while they also kept score.

In the long minutes after officials announced Laguna Hills’ third-place win, 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, hugging teary-eyed team members and their parents, who had all gathered around the team’s 4-foot gold trophy.

“I’m happy for Moorpark,” Mark Johnson, co-coach for El Camino, said as he consoled some sobbing students and held back his own tears. “I told them from Day 1 that this would be the greatest slug-out of all time, and I’m both happy and sad.”

In all, 50 teams competed in the weekend event, which tested the students’ knowledge in art, literature, math, music, social sciences and economics, plus essay writing, public speaking and interviewing.

The awards ceremony followed about 16 hours of intensive test-taking Friday and Saturday and controversy over inaccurate questions. On Sunday, decathlon officials announced that a total of four questions were disqualified because of erroneous information.

Officials invalidated two questions from the multiple-choice social studies tests Friday. Two days later, Judy Combs, executive director of the California Academic Decathlon, said officials nullified two questions from the oral portion of the Super Quiz, a game-show-style event, because of inaccuracies and problems with students mistakenly previewing questions before their competitors.

None of the invalidated questions affected the overall scores, Combs said.

“I don’t remember the specific questions, but they were inappropriate, so they were thrown out” by the U. S. Academic Decathlon, which oversees the competition, Combs said. “It’s the most annoying thing.”

Combs said decathlon officials were busy and understand, but have hired two people in the past three months to check tests more thoroughly.

“We absolutely do not want this happening again,” she said.

Moorpark’s Jones was among those coaches who criticized decathlon officials for sloppy proofreading of test questions.

“Even though we won, I am still mad that the decathlon hasn’t got its act together,” said Jones, emphasizing that it is one of the reasons he intends to resign after seven years of coaching.

Other coaches and students grumbled about the inaccuracies, but said they felt exhausted after months of grueling preparation. And at the awards ceremony, they just wanted to celebrate.

“I’m so ecstatic, I don’t know what to do,” Moorpark senior Valerie Lake said, hugging teammates and supporters.

A contingent of nearly 75 parents, students and administrators showed up at the awards event, many of them dressed in the school’s colors of green and gold.

Some of Moorpark’s loudest supporters included members of the school’s B team, eight students who scored second in the Ventura County Academic Decathlon last month and higher than at least 40 schools that were competing this weekend.

Both teams planned to compete at the state level, but in a controversial interpretation of an unwritten policy, decathlon officials said no high school could send more than one team to the state event, regardless of the team’s score in the county contest.

Throughout the year, students on 630 teams competed in 43 California counties or districts. The winning team from each region went on to represent its area at the state finals.

Moorpark Principal Max Friedman said the school will have a pep rally this week for both teams.

“These kids have worked hard,” he said, praising the camaraderie between the school’s A and B teams. “While other kids were going out on Friday nights, they were studying at Starbucks in Moorpark. I bet they spent more than 1,000 hours studying.”

Jones said the students will get a chance to rest today, their first time off since New Year’s Day.

“But come Tuesday, we have to start up again,” he said. “Only five more weeks, and I hear Texas and Wisconsin have some pretty good teams.”