Simi High Advances to State Contest in Academic Decathlon

Simi Valley High School has beaten Moorpark High School, its rival and defending national champion, to win this year’s Ventura County Academic Decathlon and advance to the state competition.

Before a crowd of nearly 1,000 cheering people, county schools Supt. Charles Weis announced Sunday afternoon that Simi High’s nine-member team had won and that Moorpark High had placed second.

Simi Valley scored 50,195 points out of a possible 60,000, breaking a record set last year by Moorpark. Simi’s score is the highest in Ventura County competition since the event started in 1982. Moorpark scored 49,528 points, also topping its own record of 47,938 points.

Moorpark and Simi have traded the county title for the last eight years. Simi had its most recent win in 1996.

“The hard work paid off and the sacrifices were worth it,” said a beaming Jennifer Tran, as she walked off the stage behind two teammates who carried a 3-foot-high winner’s trophy over their heads.

Like most of her teammates, Tran, a 17-year-old Simi senior, also won individual awards in various categories. Hers included silver medals in essay writing, interviewing and speech.

Clad in a dark suit with a red boutonniere and a pile of individual medals clanking on his chest, Simi team member Justin Underhill praised Moorpark as a worthy competitor.

“They’re a good team, and they should be proud,” he said.

Despite finishing second, Moorpark High will probably advance to the state contest in Los Angeles next month as one of seven wild-card teams allowed to participate, officials said.

Underhill said that despite his team having won numerous awards earlier in the day, he didn’t realize Simi had captured the overall title until he heard Weis’s announcement. Simi won first-place team awards in six of nine disciplines tested Jan. 7 and Saturday.

“I feel really good,” said smiling Simi senior Randy Xu. “I’ve been on the team for four years, and this was the year that really mattered to me the most.”

In addition to the team victory, Xu claimed a gold medal for having the highest overall individual score.

On the other side of the crowded auditorium, Michelle Bergman, one of two coaches for Moorpark High, said that halfway through the three-hour ceremony she was trying to calculate the grand winner based on the number of individual wins.

“It’s a healthy competition, a rivalry. They’ve been up there [on stage to accept awards] a lot more than we have,” Bergman said of Simi’s chances.

Decathletes and coaches for both schools kept track of individual wins on score sheets, attempting to tally the big winner during the ceremony. Near the end, though, the aisle where the Simi team was sitting was jammed with trophies, plaques and medals.

During the ceremony, those in attendance at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza were shown a photo essay, flashed on a giant screen and set to music, of the students preparing for the decathlon.

The crowd gave standing ovations to Tristan Ivory from Oxnard High School and Julia Velasquez of Rio Mesa High School after they gave speeches they had written for competition.

In all, 300 medals were bestowed to some of the 200 students from 16 high schools in the county who participated. Ari Shaw, a Moorpark senior who is headed to Harvard University in the fall, summed up the dedication of the teams during a brief speech to the crowd. He competed last year but not this year.

“Just before the county competition [last year], the team calculated that, as a whole, we had completed approximately 1,680 practice tests, 4,240 math problems, and consumed nearly 7,550 ounces of water, soda and Starbucks coffee. I’m amazed that I still remember that the septum is the pleasure center of the brain and that I actually began to develop a liking for opera,” he said.

Students who participate in the annual decathlon often have to give up jobs, sports, clubs and study hundreds of hours for the competition.