Cramming at El Camino
The penthouse of El Camino Real High School looks more like the aftermath of an all-night party than headquarters for a teenage brain trust.
Sleeping bags are piled in one corner and the games Trivial Pursuit and Balderdash sit on the kitchen counter. Open bags of potato and tortilla chips spill out of the cabinets.
The spacious room, normally used for teachers’ meetings, is where the school’s Academic Decathlon team has set up camp to prepare for this weekend’s state championship in the scholastic competition of tests, interviews and speeches. It is where the eight team members gobble Frosted Flakes and restudy obscure facts about American history, the theme of this year’s contest.
The Woodland Hills school is going into the Sacramento battle of the brains with some advantages. Not only is it this year’s top scorer in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but also it racked up more points of any school in California during local competitions: 49,336 out of a possible 60,000.
And El Camino Real has quite a track record over the past decade: five state and two national championships.
Still, with rival Taft High School, also in Woodland Hills, breathing down its neck and tough competitors among the other 48 California finalists, the El Camino Real team has not slacked off.
Team members, all seniors and first-year decathlon participants, have been gathering to memorize contest material on a tough schedule: after school from 2:30 to 10 p.m. weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays.
“It’s pretty hard; only seven other people for 40 hours a week,” said team member Gary Fox.
“Yeah, it can get a little annoying,” said Adam Singer, the team’s highest scorer. But he and others said the time commitment was key to winning.
“It’s everyone’s job to be here, to make sure this runs smoothly,” he said.
The Academic Decathlon is a rigorous contest in which students are grilled on such subjects as history, art, economics, literature and math. This year’s theme is “America: Growth of a Nation,” with special emphasis on the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806. The decathlon’s best-known portion is the game-show-style Super Quiz, which the public can attend.
One possible question: In an April 7, 1805, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis expressed regrets that he failed to -- students must fill in the blank. The correct answer: return expense vouchers on time.
In a few weeks, the students say they won’t care that 19th century pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk composed “Ojos Criollos,” but the team experience will stick with them.
“It’s very rewarding because I’ve been able to form extremely strong friendships and have gotten to know them like they were my second family,” said 18-year-old Adrian Wittenberg.
On the other hand, she said, “I have to work with the same seven people 14 hours a day. It’s like having seven siblings.”
Parents are feeling the effects too.
“He comes home and says good night. In the morning he says goodbye. I don’t know how long ago we had a dinner together,” Masako Fox, Gary’s mother, said laughing.
El Camino Real’s three coaches said that this year’s team is the most focused the adults have seen in their years of Academic Decathlon experience.
They hope, of course, that the team will go on to the national championship in Boise, Idaho, in April.
“This team is a nationals team,” said coach and English teacher Melinda Owen. “I don’t have to force them; I don’t have to tell them what to do. These kids are so self-motivated that they snap to it really quickly.”
The students joined the team for a variety of reasons.
Chris Taylor wanted to change his C-student image. According to decathlon rules, each team has to have a mix of students of different grade point averages, or A, B, and C students.
Taylor said his grades shot up from straight C’s to almost straight A’s since he joined the team. But he still is in the C-student slot for the contest because that was his grade point average when he joined the team.
“I’ve always thought of myself as smart, but now I’m actually proving it,” Taylor said.
Another C student, Jon Lin, said, “Before I couldn’t get myself to study for anything. Now I sit there and study for hours.”
Patrick Liu’s reason for joining the squad was simple: “I want to win.”
For Cassidy Ellis, it was helping to fulfill a family goal cut short by tragedy. Five years ago, her older brother, then a junior at El Camino Real, was picked to be on the team but died in a car accident before practices started. “It’s been a personal goal of mine to finish what he couldn’t start,” Ellis said.
She wanted to compete for her brother but also for herself, she said.
“My brother was good at everything. For a while, I tried to emulate him, but I couldn’t be exactly what he was,” Ellis said. “I had to recognize my own strengths.”
Some students just wanted to be a part of the winning history.
“To be part of the tradition is just a really cool idea,” said Eric Rasyidi.
But this year’s trek to the state championship didn’t start out smoothly. Academic Decathlon coach and economics teacher Rebecca Gessert remembered the dismay when her team went to a scrimmage in October and came out 6,000 points behind the Taft team.
“We panicked,” Gessert said. “Everyone started to count us out.”
Gessert said the score motivated the students to improve.
Some of the coaches and other teachers who help with the training have been involved with Academic Decathlon for more than 10 years. They attribute that to the students’ passion for learning.
“Once it’s in your blood, it’s hard to get out. There’s an excitement of working together as a team,” said coach Mark Johnson, a history teacher involved in Academic Decathlon for 17 years.
In the past, some El Camino Real teams carried good luck charms to contests. Three years ago the team took a harp seal stuffed animal to all the competitions leading up to winning the national title in Alaska. This year’s team is a little different.
“This team’s the first team I’ve seen that doesn’t have the superstitions that other teams have had, partly, because, I think they don’t have to be,” Gessert said. “They know it’s hard work and not lucky charms.”