Taft, West High Schools to Advance in Decathlon

Students from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Taft High School and Los Angeles County’s West High School will advance to the next level in the grueling Academic Decathlon scholastic competition, officials announced Thursday.

Taft High students erupted in cheers when they heard at a banquet Thursday evening that their school had won the district competition.

“Now we have the motivation we need to study and do well in the state [competition],” said Dean Schaffer, a junior at Taft.

Taft, scoring 48,645 points out of a possible 60,000, beat El Camino Real High School, which won last year, by 418 points.

Taft has won two national championships, in 1994 and 1989, along with a handful of state competitions since 1987.

The district, which holds its own competition because of its size, will take eight wild-card teams to the state tournament: El Camino Real, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, Granada Hills Charter, Marshall, Reseda, Palisades Charter and Venice high schools.

West High in Torrance, with 44,287 points, was the top-scorer in the Los Angeles County competition and will advance to the state Academic Decathlon.

Beverly Hills High School, last year’s county champion, came in second with 41,967 points.

The county tournament will not send wild-card teams to the state contest because scores were not high enough compared with others in the state.

Private schools will announce the winner of their tournament on Sunday.

The top teams will advance to the state finals, held from March 10 to 13 in Los Angeles, and vie for a spot in the national competition in Chicago in April.

The Academic Decathlon is a local, state and national program in which high school students compete in a series of tests on a range of subjects.