With Finals Over, Decathlon Team Takes a Breather

For the first time in months, Steve Mihalovits, 17, slept in. He rolled out of bed shortly after noon Saturday--only because his teammate woke him.

The national finals of the Academic Decathlon were over. No more tests. No more essays. No more speeches. And no more studying.

Steve and three of his teammates from Simi Valley High School, Randy Xu, 17, Cary Opel, 18, and Justin Underhill, 17, spent Saturday at Fiesta Texas amusement park. They rode rides like “Superman Krypton Coaster” and ate popcorn and ice cream, trying to keep their minds off whether they had won or lost the two-day competition.

Simi Valley’s students have a good chance of winning the contest. Before the two-day competition, the team was ranked third, behind schools from Texas and Wisconsin. And Friday, California’s decathletes beat 37 other teams to win the Super Quiz.

All the waiting will be over today, when the new national champion is announced. A victory would mark the second year a Ventura County school has won the national contest. Moorpark High School’s “acadeca” team took home the top title last year.

About 400 students from Arizona to Alaska gathered in San Antonio for the 19th annual “contest of academic strength.” The students gave interviews, delivered speeches, wrote essays and took tests.

Saturday afternoon, the four Simi students sounded like most boys. They weren’t talking about the Suez Canal or quadratic equations. Instead, they yapped about supermodels, comics, movies and girls.

After one ride of loops and curves and curly-cues, Cary said, “I liked the corkscrew.”

The diversion didn’t last long. After an hour at the park, the students were comparing answers on the decathlon tests, laughing about how much time they have spent together in the last year and talking about what to expect today.