Congratulations, El Camino Real

Congratulations--again--to El Camino Real High School. Winners of the Los Angeles Unified School District Academic Decathlon in February, the Woodland Hills school last weekend claimed its fifth statewide championship in 10 years. The team will travel to Anchorage next month as California’s representative in the U.S. Academic Decathlon.

Perennial district and state champions, El Camino Real won the national title in 1998. But trophies, while nice, are the least of a decathlete’s rewards.

Team members from years past who have gone on to study at prestigious universities and undertake careers as lawyers and television writers credit their success to the skills they learned over long hours spent studying for Academic Decathlon competitions.

Not that they remember what they studied--the obscure literary references, the daunting equations. Those faded from memory once the exhausting series of tests, speeches and interviews were over. What stayed with them was how they prepared, how they learned to focus, to take tests, to manage time, to speak in public, to work as a team. Valuable lessons all.

Decathletes from El Camino Real can look forward to using these lessons throughout their lives, as can the winning teams from other San Fernando Valley schools, including the private Bishop Alemany in Mission Hills, which took fifth place among 50 schools from throughout the state; Burbank High, which placed seventh; and North Hollywood High, which placed eighth.

But first, El Camino team members Samantha Henry, Elan Bar, Walter Ching, Grace Giles, Aria Haghighi, Dennis Kuo, Scott Lulovics, Ryan Ruby and Alan Wittenberg have the April 18-21 national contest in Anchorage to look forward to--and to prepare for. If they don’t tire of winning by then, we won’t tire of congratulating them.