Studious Approach to Decathlon Victory

Coach Arthur Berchin has seen the striking contrast between his students winning the U.S. Academic Decathlon competition and placing oh-so-close.

After winning the California championship in 1988, his team at William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills captured the silver medal at the national finals in San Antonio -- no small feat in this teenagers’ battle-of-the-brainiest. But when the team flew home to Los Angeles, Berchin recalls, “we saw a mighty big terminal with no one there to greet us.”

Taft avenged itself the next year at the national competition in Providence, R.I., and that victory was much sweeter, Berchin said. Not only did the pilot on their homebound flight announce that the newly crowned U.S. Academic Decathlon champs were aboard, but a barrage of television crews, well-wishers and the school band greeted them upon touchdown.

“Let me tell you, between second place and first place, there’s some difference,” said Berchin, who coached Taft to a second national title in 1994.

But while he took a several-year hiatus from coaching thereafter, Taft’s state and national winning streak largely dried up.

So this year, Berchin is taking no chances. His California champs have been ensconced in their San Antonio hotel rooms since leaving Los Angeles on Sunday. Most teams arrive Tuesday or in time for registration Wednesday, before Thursday’s start of the grueling two-day battery of tests, essays, personal interviews and speeches that make up the competition.

Berchin said he wanted the team to have time to acclimate to the two-hour time difference and the new environment. To help them focus, he rented a small conference room so that half of the students could study alone in their hotel rooms while their roommates repaired to the conference room for last-minute cramming.

The strategy reflects Berchin’s core belief that most learning and retention occur through individual study. The team members study separately at the school, getting together as a group primarily for practice tests and essays. That’s when they help one another. In trigonometry, for instance, math whiz Julia Rebrova will help the only other young woman on the squad, Monica Schettler, whose forte is writing.

The dynamic is quite a contrast to that of last year’s national champions, El Camino Real High School, who also hail from Woodland Hills. They nearly always seemed to be together, quizzing one another, goofing around and eating homemade dinners brought daily to study sessions by team members’ parents.

But Berchin believes “time on task” is essential to all education. Learning never comes easily, he insists, even for his brightest students.

“There’s no such thing that learning is just fun,” he said. “It’s a cliche I hope we will move away from.

“When one is being successful after putting in hard work and reaching some of those goals, then learning becomes fun,” he said. “But in the beginning, middle and end, you have to make that effort. The more you advance, the more challenging it becomes.”

His students certainly work hard. They have spent at least four hours studying after school each weekday except for three hours on Fridays. Most Saturdays, they study from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a similar schedule over winter and spring breaks.

Berchin doesn’t even like them to study outdoors. As the students studied in separate classrooms at the deserted school, when everyone else was on spring break recently, he learned that one had been working outside. “I’m glad it’s going to be raining tomorrow, so they can’t study outside,” he said.

Not that Taft hasn’t done well. Since Berchin stepped back in to coach nearly four years ago, Taft has won at the district level three times and been runner up the fourth.

But until this year, it lost the state title each time, including last year when it lost to archrival El Camino, which used its wild card berth in the state finals to defeat Taft and went on to win a second consecutive national title. (Winning the state title is often more difficult than the national title: Only one team can represent California, whose teams have won the nationals in about half the years since 1990.)

Berchin is living somewhat vicariously by coaching. The competition didn’t exist when he was growing up in Burbank, where his father worked for a brokerage firm and his mother managed a women’s clothing shop.

“I would have loved the decathlon,” he said.

He always loved school and knew he wanted to go into education, and he earned undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees at UCLA.

Hence, he is known around school as “Dr. Berchin.” After working in graduate school education administration for seven years, he decided to teach high school, because he believed that’s where good teachers were most needed. He joined the faculty at Taft in 1984.

The silver-haired Berchin would not reveal his age or much else about himself, other than that he lives in Encino and is single.

“The kids ask what religion or political party I am. I don’t say. It’s wrong. You’re not supposed to be telling students what religious holidays you take off for or how you vote. This is not a government class.”

Despite his reserve, the team members say they respect him and value his dedication.

“He doesn’t try so much to be friends [with the team], nor does he shy away from them,” says team member David Lopez. “You know he has an ideal that he wants you to meet and if you don’t, you’ll disappoint him. So it motivates you.”

Though they know little about him, he knows a lot about each of them, talking about each with a sort of paternal pride. He knows of their family and personal issues, describing in detail how the father of one recently suffered a stroke and how another is trying to negotiate a better financial package to attend the University of Pennsylvania rather than Berkeley.

Still, he’s going to be mighty disappointed if the team doesn’t win the gold.

Sitting on his desk is a congratulatory note signed by every team member of Moorpark High School in Ventura County, another perennial powerhouse that placed third at the state competition this year. (Moorpark edged out Taft for the state title in 2003 and went on to win the nationals.) “You had to have worked extremely hard to do so well at state -- hats off to you guys,” said one inscription. “Very impressive,” said another.

“I had a great team and you clobbered us, which shows what a special team you are,” wrote Moorpark coach Larry Jones.

Berchin has never sent such a note. But he says he’s never forgotten the editorial published almost 20 years ago in the Daily News, criticizing the team for not smiling more as members accepted second place at the nationals.

“I’m not the best loser,” he says. “I do go up to the winning coach and congratulate him. It’s not easy, but you have to do it.... I’m not a very good sport.”

He prefers to think of himself as a very good winner.