El Camino Is Academic Champ -- Again
El Camino Real High School won its third U.S. Academic Decathlon on Saturday, making the Woodland Hills school the second-winningest to ever compete in the event.
The victory tied California with Texas as the state with the most national titles with 11.
The team of eight seniors whooped, hugged and punched the air after learning they had narrowly beat Mountain View High School of Mesa, Ariz.
The California team’s score -- 50,656 points out of a possible 60,000 -- was only 266 higher than the Arizona school’s.
“What am I going to do now?” senior Adrian Wittenberg said. “I’m going to sleep a lot ... and figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”
El Camino coaches estimate the team logged more than 1,200 hours of organized study to prepare for the grueling, two-day series of tests covering topics from music theory to economics. El Camino entered the competition ranked No. 1 out of 41 teams, having earned the highest score in any statewide contest.
That track record -- combined with rumors of the team’s marathon study sessions -- had imbued the eight-member team with a mystique by the time they got to Boise. They were the team to beat and the team to fear: Opposing coaches talked about them the way NBA coaches talk about Shaquille O’Neal.
El Camino coach Melinda Owen could feel something was up when the team rolled into a build-your-own potato party on the eve of the contest. When her team entered, she said, she could hear a wave of nervous whispers.
“It’s almost like you’re a celebrity in some strange way,” she said.
With a smile, Owen conceded that it might have had something to do with the team’s matching black satin jackets. According to Owen, the El Camino team began working on the decathlon last summer, putting in three seven-hour study sessions per week.
When classes started in the fall, the members worked together every day after school until 5 p.m., extending those sessions to 10 p.m. in January. They worked through their winter break, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on many Saturdays.
Other teams’ coaches said El Camino’s organized study hours surpassed those of this year’s three other top-ranked teams -- Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas -- going into the event.
Texas teams are hampered by state regulations that limit all extracurricular activities to eight hours per week. Renae Simons, the coach of Texas’ Friendswood High School team, said her team picks up the slack at unofficial study sessions at Starbucks.
Arizona coach Curt Canaday said his students had been training three hours a day with their coaches since mid-November. Aside from that, they had to study on their own, he said.
“As much as I love Academic Decathlon,” Canaday said, “It’s not something I want to do 12 hours a day. My wife would kill me if I did.” The Colorado champions from Boulder High School conceded that they had “kinda stopped” studying after winning the state title in February. They were sure, he said, that California had gone overboard.
“I’m surprised they don’t have some kind of cybergenetic plug in the back of their heads,” said Mike Carlson, 16.
“California is scary,” added team member Rachel Zeller. “We know we can’t beat them. And we don’t spent 10 hours a day studying.”
El Camino assistant coach Christian Cerone said it’s hard for some outsiders to understand the culture in California’s most decathlon-crazy schools. At El Camino, joining “Deca” doesn’t carry the stigma of geekdom. And the kids tend to push themselves without much prodding.
“I can see these people from the outside saying we’re slave drivers, abusing the kids and robbing them of their childhood,” Cerone said. “But in the time I’ve done this, I’ve coached 44 kids, and at the end I’ve only had one who said it’s a bit too much for you to handle.”
The California students were indeed holed up in their hotel rooms after Thursday’s opening rounds, studying quietly while their counterparts from Colorado roamed the hallways.
Senior Adam Singer was reviewing the principles of art for what might have been the hundredth time. Below him, students from other states threw a Frisbee by the pool. Singer’s teammate, Gary Fox, was taking a brief nap near the fat stacks of materials and test quizzes that the team had been poring over since last summer.
Singer, 17, said the nationals were attended by two tiers of teams -- those who came for a vacation in Boise and those who were still gunning for the championship.
“A lot of teams don’t take it as seriously,” he said, adding graciously: “If they did, I’m sure they would be in a position to win too.”
The Academic Decathlon is a California-born concept, hatched in 1968 by Robert Peterson, a former Orange County schools’ superintendent. Today the state is home to about 700 competing schools, nearly a third of the nationwide total. States such as Wyoming and Oklahoma, by comparison, often field fewer than 10 teams per year statewide.
California’s large number of participants results in fierce competition, which in turn breeds success.
The state typically produces half a dozen teams of national-title caliber each year. The Los Angeles Unified School District alone has produced three national champions in El Camino, Marshall and Taft. Only one school, however, can represent California in the national finals, and to do so that school must rise above dozens of rivals at both city and state competitions.
All decathlon coaches have limits to the talent they can draft. The rules require teams to be equally composed of A, B and C students. As a result, one of the few ways to get ahead of the competition is to add practice hours. That’s what El Camino did this year after losing to Taft in the 2003 city championship.
“It’s like a snowball effect,” Cerone said. “Everybody wants to win, so every year, everybody puts more and more effort into it.”
Over the years, the system that these students work so hard to crack has been faulted by some educators for emphasizing rote learning over creative thinking. Seven of the 10 decathlon events involve written multiple-choice tests, and students must memorize thousands of facts, many of them from study guides distributed by the decathlon organizers.
Daniel Gayer, coach of the Louisiana team, said the decathlon is helpful in introducing students to new ideas. But he said it has its limits.
“If the decathlon had a test on Jack and Jill, you’d have to know who Jack was, and who Jill was, and maybe what was in the well,” Gayer said. “But it wouldn’t help you if you’re interested in what they went up the hill for -- or what was Jack’s relationship to Jill before they went up the hill.”
Yet El Camino students say they have benefited in big and small ways. Gary Fox said it taught him how to work with a team. Patrick Liu believes it will make his first year of college easier next year. “It’s given me better study habits, of just sitting down and studying nonstop,” he said.
Terrie and Ron Supancic of West Hills said their grandson Chris was only interested in video games before he joined the team.
“He was an absolute slacker and lazy bum” before the decathlon, Terrie Supancic said. “And he would have told you that. Now, he’s talking about what college to go to and what to study,” added her husband.