Moorpark High Wins U.S. ‘Aca-Deca’ Title

Moorpark High School’s Academic Decathlon team won the national championship Saturday, besting 37 teams from across the country and providing a fitting swan song for its coach, who retires from the competition this year.

“This is awesome!” said 17-year-old Ashlee Scott as she stepped off the podium where she and her eight teammates had just received their award. “It was the most exhilarating thing. I can’t even breathe!”

Moorpark scored 51,423 out of a possible 60,000 points to win the competition. Waukesha High School in Wisconsin came in second with 49,218 points. It’s the second time in five years that the school has won the national title.

“I’ve always said the talent I have is picking great kids,” said coach Larry Jones, who after 12 years has decided to retire from coaching. “This was an amazing group of kids.”

During the awards ceremony held at the Erie Civic Center, the Moorpark team received more than 30 medals in subjects that included art, math, social sciences and literature.

But the students and a large contingent of family, friends and school officials who had traveled from the Ventura County community became increasingly anxious as the night’s major announcement loomed. They formed a wall around the students, who held hands, looked toward the floor and closed their eyes as the winner was named. The group broke into an explosive roar, hugged, cried and kissed before making it to the stage, where parents began an impromptu chant.

“I’m so proud of them,” said Talia Sampson, a team alternate who had worn Mardi Gras beads, an anklet and gold ribbons for luck. “I can’t tell you how hard they worked. Every single person up there deserves it.”

The night was a sweet ending for Jones, who, with Saturday’s victory, ended countless hours of poring over literature, mathematics and obscure facts with his students.

His son, Nathaniel, who is on the decathlon team, graduates this year, and the world history teacher says he needs a break from the grueling routine that goes into coaching a decathlon powerhouse.

“It’s bittersweet,” Jones said as he held the glass trophy. “I’ll miss having nine kids as part of my family for an entire year.”

In his tenure as coach, Jones led Moorpark to a national title in 1999 and several state championships.

The school has had few volunteers to take over Jones’ job and may not even have a team next year, Principal Anna Merriman said.

“That would be like when John Wooden left UCLA,” Merriman said, referring to the legendary basketball coach. “Who would ever want to take his place?”

But Jones disagrees. Moorpark has bright students, and they are the most important element of a winning team, he said.

“I keep getting told that the bar’s been set too high,” Jones said. “It’s real frustrating. Hopefully, somebody will step up and want to continue the program.”

During the two-day national competition, hundreds of students from throughout the country took multiple-choice tests in several subjects, wrote essays, delivered speeches and gave personal interviews.

On Friday, students competed in the Super Quiz, a two-part event that includes the only public portion of the competition.

On a stage before cheering fans, students fielded 45 questions on oceanography. Moorpark and two other schools tied for second place with 36 correct answers. J. Frank Dobie High School in Houston was first with 40 correct answers.

Since last fall the seven seniors and two juniors who made up the Moorpark High School team stayed busy learning about oceanography, memorizing snippets of compositions from Beethoven and Chopin and reading Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd” countless times.

Lindsay Hebert had initially set off to enjoy a stress-free senior year. She even tried out for the cheerleading team. But when she didn’t make the cut, she decided to stick what she did knows best: academics.

“Aca-deca,” as many call the decathlon, was anything but relaxing, but for Lindsay it proved to be more worthwhile than her first choice.

“It’s kind of the complete antithesis of the cheerleading team,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to be really proud of intelligence and have it pay off.”

This year’s team -- seniors Lindsay Hebert, Nathaniel Jones, Adam Abed, Paul Ideal, Kevin Randolph, Ashlee Scott and Grant Volk, and juniors Tracy Yagi and Max Geiger -- won its third state championship last month.

“This is just amazing,” a beaming Lindsay said Saturday.

“My thanks goes out to the cheerleading team for cutting me. No rally can ever compare to this.”