Alemany Wins 5th Decathlon

Alemany High School captured its fifth consecutive Academic Decathlon competition among Southern California’s private schools Saturday night.

Alemany also won the Super Quiz portion of the contest, competing against 18 teams from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

The last day of the grueling decathlon was held in Alemany High’s dining hall, where nearly 400 parents, siblings and supporters of the competitors kept score and loudly applauded.

In two other Academic Decathlon contests Saturday, all 59 Los Angeles Unified School District campuses and 60 Los Angeles County schools fought it out in their own super quizzes. The quiz is a fast-paced question-and-answer contest in a “College Bowl” format.

In its third consecutive Super Quiz win, Los Angeles High School scored 51 points out of a possible 60, edging El Camino Real High of Woodland Hills, which tallied 48. Marshall High of Silver Lake finished third with 47 points in the competition at UCLA.

Palos Verdes Peninsula High in Rolling Hills Estates and Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights shared the Super Quiz first place honors in the county competition at Torrance High. Burbank High, Rowland High in Rowland Heights and South High in Torrance all scored 40 points to share second place, followed by Torrance and Arcadia high schools, each with 38 points.

The overall decathlon winners for Los Angeles Unified and L.A. County will be announced Friday. Top finishers will advance to the state competitions next month in Los Angeles.

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At Saturday’s private-school Super Quiz, the pressure on students--and their tense teachers--was palpable.

“I’m extremely proud,” said Alemany coach Janie Prucha, who watched from the front row and leaped to her feet with applause at each correct answer from her students.

Alemany clinched its decathlon victory with an overall score of 48,645 points out of a possible 60,000. St. Francis High in La Canada Flintridge came in second, with 43,550, and the Rose & Alex Pilibos Armenian School in Hollywood was third with 36,775 points.

Alemany seniors Nicole Rodriguez and Melissa Cortina, each 17, gave bracelets of wooden beads adorned with Chinese characters to their classmates as good-luck charms.

“It feels wonderful. I just want to go and hug my teammates,” said Nicole, whose correct answers sustained Alemany’s lead over its competitors in the last seconds of the Super Quiz. “I want to sleep for a few days.”

Melissa took first place in the individual competition. Cynthia Kinard of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Canada Flintridge was second and Greg Watson of St. Francis was third.

Another Alemany team member, Rex Stoner, 17, sported a black bracelet with a pewter Chinese character, given to him for luck by his father, marking the arrival Saturday of the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Months of preparation lead up to the competition, whose theme this year is “The Sustainable Earth.”

Students on decathlon teams regularly spend 20 hours a week in class and at home studying a required syllabus published each year by officials of the U.S. Academic Decathlon.

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Teams are made up of nine members, including three students with a grade point average of 3.75 or above, three with a GPA between 3.00 and 3.74, and three with a GPA of 2.99 or below.

The rigorous decathlon competition at Alemany began at 8:10 a.m., as students wrote a 50-minute timed essay and took a music test. A battery of multiple-choice tests in math, economics, fine arts, literature and social science was followed by speeches and interviews with judges.

When those events were over, the 90-minute quiz segment began.

“In the morning, it’s not in front of anyone” except the judges, said Bobby Garafolo, 16, a junior on the St. Francis team. The pressures are different for the quiz. “This is actually public,” he said.

Students were called to the stage to answer questions that have five possible answers. Sitting next to individual proctors, the students were given seven seconds to record their answers on an electronic scoring sheet.

Some questions probably would have stumped many adults. For example, students were asked to identify the geographic area that suffered from acid rain because of Chinese sulfur dioxide emissions. The correct answer was western Japan. Another question asked the cost of anti-poaching efforts per square mile in African parks. That answer was $500.

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Times staff writer Steve Berry contributed to this report.