LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Clear Lake High School Academic Decathlon team is in the midst of its final preparations for a trip to the California Academic Decathlon competition later this week.
The state championship begins early this Friday and continues through Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento Hotel, Inderkum High School and Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento.
The final event, the Super Quiz Team Relay, will be held at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium on Saturday afternoon. The awards ceremony takes place Sunday morning.
This year's theme is World War I.
Clear Lake High's team won the county championship on Feb. 2, and earned the right to travel to Sacramento to face the best schools from 38 counties.
The team's final score was 35,164, winning by more than 3,000 points, team member Asia Jones told the Lakeport Unified School Board last month.
“Winning by 3,000 points is huge,” Jones said.
Jones also reported that she and her teammates took home a total of 46 medals from the county competition.
The nine-member team has three students from three academic levels – Honors, with a grade point average of 3.75 to 4.00; Scholastic, 3.00 to 3.74 GPA; and Varsity, GPA of 2.99 or below.
Team members compete in disciplines including speech, interview, essay, science, economics, music, mathematics, social science, arts, and language and literature.
According to Clear Lake High School Principal Steve Gentry, the school's Academic Decathlon team won the county competition 16 times from 1981 to 1997.
There was then a gap in the school's participation before it rejoined the event in the last several years.
School officials reported that it was the students who asked to reform a team and to get an Academic Decathlon class together.
Philip Leighton and Abby LaBar took the lead in seeking out the school's support, guaranteeing a win, the school reported.
“This was a great class. Two of the students have been on the team for four years, others for two or three years; they were the driving force in making this a class and a team,” said Academic Decathlon Coach Jim Rogers.
In turn, the students have worked hard and brought home another trophy.
Clear Lake High will compete in Division III at the state event.
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