Peninsula, El Camino Real Win Academic Decathlon

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School took first place in the 2001 Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon on Friday, and will join 13 other schools in various categories across the county that will compete in the state Academic Decathlon next month.

The Peninsula team members discovered during the awards ceremony at the Quiet Canyon Country Club in Montebello that they had outscored 51 other teams.

“We all just screamed and hugged each other. We were just so excited,” said coach Roberta Kordich, of the school’s third victory in as many years. Her team scored 43,650 points.

One team member, Esther Tsai, was the overall high scorer at this year’s competition in her second year in the contest.

“Once we heard the No. 2 announced, we knew we had won,” said Esther, 17, of Rancho Palos Verdes.

“It’s great to win L.A. County but we’re looking forward to state,” she added. “We hope we’ll do well there.”

West High in Torrance scored 41,150 points and Burbank High scored 40,616 to garner second and third place, respectively.

Fourth and fifth places were captured by Beverly Hills High and Glen A. Wilson High of Hacienda Heights.

This is the first year five schools from Los Angeles County will compete at the state Academic Decathlon, to be held March 16-18 in Los Angeles. Previously, no more than four teams represented the county at the statewide games, Kordich said.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District’s branch of the contest, winners were also announced Friday. El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills captured its sixth consecutive decathlon title.

The nine-member team scored 47,705 points in the two-day contest that concluded last weekend at UCLA with the Super Quiz.

Marshall High of Los Feliz came in second, with 43,455 points, and Garfield High of Los Angeles was third with 41,702, decathlon officials announced.

The top three Los Angeles Unified winners will be accompanied to the state contest by Los Angeles High, which scored 41,276 points; North Hollywood High, which tallied 41,257, and Palisades Charter, which scored 39,895.

The official results for both the county and Los Angeles district contests are compilations of scores from nine sections of the competition and those from the Super Quiz, a quick-paced, game show-style contest in which students answer questions on a specific theme. This year’s theme was “Understanding the Self” and covered philosophy, religion and psychology.

In the private school category, teams from Alemany High School in Mission Hills, and St. Francis High and Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, both of La Canada Flintridge, will compete at the state level.

Alemany won its sixth consecutive decathlon victory last Saturday.

The top-scoring team of the state games will move on to compete in the national Academic Decathlon, to be held April 18-21 in Anchorage, Alaska.