Valley Squad Off to Alaska for Academic Decathlon

Know this trivia about the El Camino Real High School Academic Decathlon team and you begin to understand: Their jackets are stitched in Greek and the poet on the squad wears a T-shirt bearing the face of a French auteur.

The Los Angeles Unified School District team will represent California in the U.S. Academic Decathlon, which starts today in Anchorage. And, of course, the members marked the countdown with Roman numerals.

Armed with enough calculus to school Sir Isaac Newton and a grasp of the symbolism in Paul Gauguin’s paintings, the nine seniors from the Woodland Hills campus are a different breed of high school student--and they know it. As one of their coaches describes them, they can be cocky and pretentious, silly and moody.

They could also be national champs.

El Camino Real, which has won five state titles in 10 years, last competed in and won the national tournament in 1998. Since then, Moorpark and Simi Valley high schools in Ventura County have captured the California championship, and in 1999 Moorpark brought home the national trophy.

This year, all other California competitors have been pushed aside by El Camino’s team of rambunctious rookies, who as freshmen saw their school bring home its last national trophy. As they see it, one, maybe two, teams stand in their way. In their individual state finals, both the Texas and Illinois teams amassed more points than El Camino.

But now, going into the three-day national finals, the slate is wiped clean. The tests are new, the judges have never heard the decathletes’ speeches, and since winning the state title, the El Camino brains have spent more than 150 hours in their littered study hall and de facto clubhouse.

“We are cautiously optimistic,” team member Scott Lulovics said from Anchorage. “We’re trying to cram as much as we can--a last-minute dash to the finish line.”

Since the beginning of the school year, Lulovics, Elan Bar, Walter Ching, Grace Giles, Aria Haghighi, Samantha Henry, Dennis Kuo, Ryan Ruby and Alan Wittenberg have cast aside homework, cut back on Internet time and, in Henry’s case, packed away the flute, trombone and drums--to prepare for competition against 500 of America’s brightest high school students.

“Those are my stress releasers,” Henry said of her instruments, “and when I don’t have my stress releasers, I’m a mess.”

Multiple-choice tests in six subjects, a speech, an interview, an essay and a quiz taken before cheering fans compose the Academic Decathlon. The contest is not merely a test of knowledge but also of memorization and endurance. The students who do best not only are smart, but also know how to study.

Referring to an essay by philosopher Thomas Nagel about bats, Ruby, the team’s man of letters, said, “However much we learn about a bat’s brain, you can never learn what it’s like to be [a bat], so, similarly, no matter how much you think you know about Academic Decathlon, you can really never tell how it’s going to be until you actually do it.”

Not all academic decathletes are honor-roll students. Each nine-person squad must field A, B and C students, known respectively as Honors, Scholastic and Varsity decathletes.

“Academic Decathlon is the only place I will ever be on the varsity team,” said Wittenberg, who is known by his teammates as the “evil genius” and a decent bridge player.

This year, 55 schools from 39 states will compete, with the winner to be announced Saturday night.

The returning champion, James E. Taylor High School from the Houston suburb of Katy, scored 46,726 out of a possible 60,000, the highest in state competitions and 1,276 points more than El Camino.

“They’re the God team,” Ruby said. “I’d like to know what Texas does.”

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School from Chicago is also considered a strong team. Those schools and El Camino have a tradition of dominating the decathlon. In El Camino’s case, winning the state championship so often has led to rumors that the school somehow cheats and that its decathletes are snobby, charges that the team and their coaches laugh off.

“We’re definitely not about being elitist at all,” said English teacher and coach Christian Cerone. “We encourage them to go out and be friendly and be sportsmanlike.”

Cynthia Swetnam, the coach of Taylor High’s team, offers an explanation for El Camino’s continued success: “They just have a tradition of winning, and once that tradition of winning is set, it just kind of grows.”

Indeed, Academic Decathlon is taken seriously at El Camino. Melinda Owen, the team’s other coach, estimates the school has spent $1,000 this year on study guides alone.

Principal Ron Bauer boasts about the school’s six consecutive city championships as though “Deca”--as it’s known on campus--were a sport. Newspaper articles about the 1998 national title hang in his office. Bauer is part of the team’s support group of more than 30 teachers, administrators, parents and siblings in Alaska.

This year’s squad has competed well in economics, language and literature, and speech. But, based on its performance last month against California schools, art and essays appeared to need work.

Another weak spot is the “Super Quiz,” which tests recall of articles about psychology, philosophy and religion.

Regardless of whether El Camino leaves Alaska as the national champion, the team will almost certainly not leave empty-handed. At the state tournament, members won 28 individual medals, and Kuo, probably the team’s quietest and most modest member, scored highest in California. Haghighi, considered the squad jester, trailed Kuo by just 12 points, out of a possible 10,000.

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Team Profile

Starting today in Anchorage, nine seniors from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills face their final test after eight months of brain-racking: the finals of the U.S. Academic Decathlon. El Camino won the national title in 1998.

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Elan Bar

GPA: 3.1

Nickname: “Mr. Jeanyus”

Age: 17

Post-graduation plan: Undecided

Speech topic: Dating and feminism

Strong events: Interview

“I’d like to say I’m ‘laid-back,’ but I’m lazy.”

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Walter Ching (not pictured)

GPA: 3.6

Nickname: “Genius?”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: U.S. Navy

Speech topic: Boredom

Strong events: Math, speech

“I did a lot of things I never would have done if I wasn’t in Deca.”

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Grace Giles

GPA: 4.1

Nickname: “The Enforcer”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Caltech

Speech topic: Numerology

Strong events: Math, speech, interview

“I don’t like people to push me around and tell me what to do.”

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Aria Haghighi

GPA: 4.6

Nickname: “Mad Genius”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: Stanford

Speech topic: Humor

Strong events: Math

“I try to be spontaneous whenever I can.”

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Samantha “Sam” Henry

GPA: 4.4

Nickname: “Super Genius”

Age: 17

Post-graduation plan: USC

Speech topic: Ghosts

Strong events: Speech

“I never really thought about being on the team before, because devoting myself to one thing was never really my thing.”

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Dennis Kuo

GPA: 4.6

Nickname: “(Absolute Value of) Genius”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: Stanford

Speech topic: Federal witness protection program

Strong events: Economics, language & literature, science

“I don’t know why I joined the team, and I still don’t know.”

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Scott Lulovics

GPA: 4.1

Nickname: “Practical Genius”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: UC San Diego

Speech topic: Death, and the fear of it

Strong events: Economics, science, speech

“I get to spend most of my time with eight of the most interesting people at my school.”

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Ryan Ruby

GPA: 4.1

Nickname: “Byronic Genius”

Age: 17

Post-graduation plan: Columbia University

Speech topic: Bullfighting

Strong events: Language & literature, biology, speech

“However much we learn about a bat’s brain, you can never learn what it’s like to be [a bat], so similarly, no matter how much you think you know about Academic Decathlon, you can really never tell how it’s going to be until you actually do it.”

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Alan Wittenberg

GPA: 2.8

Nickname: “Evil Genius”

Age: 18

Post-graduation plan: University of Washington or CSUN

Speech topic: Pokemon, and the danger it presents to society

Strong events: Economics, language & literature, speech

“Academic Decathlon is the only place I will ever be on the varsity team.”THE COACHES

Melinda Owen: English teacher; second year as coach; El Camino alumna is known as team’s disciplinarian.

“They always know when they get something from me, it’s the truth -- even if it’s not pretty.”

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Christian Cerone: English teacher; second year as coach; more organized than Owen, more mellow.

“I might not show it as much, but I’m extremely competitive.”

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Compiled by MASSIE RITSCH/Los Angeles Times

RICHARD SANCHEZ/Los Angeles Times