~ February Issue ~
 

Academic Decathlon Goes Home with Gold
By Leslie Estrada, Editor-in-chief

        “This year’s team worked very hard, and all their effort paid off! Ten medals and 16^th place out of 53 schools in the Decathlon is an achievement of which to be proud” said Mrs. Stucken, the coach of El Segundo’s Academic Decathlon team. Every year, a group of students study for a major competition in which other schools from around the county also participate. Each year, a new theme is studied; this year, it was China. The Superquiz is an additional subject to be tested on, which is easily considered the fun part [for some]. The Superquiz topic was an introduction to climatology, also pertaining to China.
        The competition is spread over two days, making it a bit easier for everyone. On day one of the competition, each Decathlete prepared a speech, an interview and an essay to be scored. Senior and Co-Captain of the team, Jessica Kirkwood, won the 1^st place medal for her essay, “I’m pretty stoked because I brought home the gold”, she says. Junior Natasha Amlani won a 2^nd place medal for her speech- “I was really surprised but happy that my hard work had paid off”.
        Lots of time and dedication was put into learning and memorizing other subjects.  “[I was taught] to work hard and study”, said sophomore Andrew Stier. On day two of the competition, Decathletes were tested on Chinese language and literature, music, history, art, math and economics. Obviously, it could have been very strenuous, but fortunately, El Segundo pulled through. Music turned out to be El Segundo’s “it” subject; 4 of our Decathletes won bronze medals and 1 won a gold medal. Senior Devon Maloney said of her bronze win, “I was actually pretty surprised- but you know, I was in good company, so I was proud of all of us”. Along with Maloney, sophomore Varun Roperia, senior Erin Matchett and Kirkwood also received the bronze. Senior and Captain, Stephanie Ng, won the gold in music. “Academic Decathlon is an amazing experience; it’s like the Superbowl for nerds. We owe all our success to each other’s motivation and the amazing guidance of Mama Stucken”, says Ng who also won a medal for being the top team scorer. The final two medals won were in the history category; silver for Roperia and a bronze for Ng. “[Being in the Decathlon, I realized] how much fun it can be to spend hours learning basically useless information”, said senior Lily Ronney. The Decathletes will see how all this information on China will be useful to them in the future, but luckily, El Segundo has some bragging rights until next year.