Academic Team to Receive Award

Simi Valley High School’s academic decathletes will be honored tonight at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Team members will receive the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Distinguished Leadership Award at a dinner.

After winning the Ventura County and California contests, the nine-member team took second place in the national competition in San Antonio last month. They took tests, delivered speeches, wrote essays and gave interviews during the two-day event. The first-place team was from Katy, Texas.

Simi Valley’s decathletes are Cary Opel, Randy Xu, Jeff Robertson, Jennifer Tran, David Bartlett, Steve Mihalovits, Kevin White, Justin Underhill and Mike Truex, and their coaches are Ken and Sally Hibbitts.

This marks the second time the leadership award has been presented. Last year the presidential foundation honored two local Blue Ribbon schools.