This school year’s Aliso Niguel Academic Decathlon team has performed the best they’ve ever had since Ms Lee and Ms. Terhardt’s have started leading the club; winning first in the third division, 49 medals and the award for the Super Quiz.
The Academic Decathlon is organized by the national non-profit organization: United States Academic Decathlon. It is an annual high school competition revolving around challenging high achieving students’ overall academic ability in ten different subjects: math, science, music, art, history, economics, literature/language, interview, essay and speech.
The competition’s theme is different every year, as decided by the United States Academic Decathlon, affecting each subject’s test (in those that are applicable) and forming a new curriculum to all teams around the United States. This year, the theme was “Our Changing Climate,” and participants were required to read “Solar Storms” by Linda Hogan.
The Academic Decathlon at Aliso Niguel is a club consisting of a team of students who study together in preparation for the competition. They meet every Monday after school for an hour and a half, and Ms. Lee and Ms. Terhardt set up lessons and practice tests that follow the given curriculum. Students use this, as well as outside tools to prepare. Some students even begin over the summer due to the copious amount of information they need to learn.
Ms. Lee says, “[There] is a lot of individual motivation from students, obviously, Ms. Terhardt and I, we try our best to help students study … but what’s really cool is that they are the ones who end up putting in their own study time outside of school, … and we still got first place.”
The competition took place on Jan. 25, and Feb. 1 at Tustin high school and Westminster high school. The team consisted of 18 people that were split into 3 different groups, depending on their academic GPA. Each member individually took seven multiple choice tests, and later, three subjective tests to win a medal. Those who had the highest scores in their GPA group could contribute to the overall team score to win the division trophy for the team. Our team successfully reached first place in the third division with a score of 31,763.3 points.
According to Ms. Terhardt, “ Everyone on our team actually won at least one medal individually.” A huge accomplishment and pride for the whole club.
The event also sees some incredible teamwork happening. The Super Quiz is a special group event during the competition where nine nominated team members gather and compete against other school groups by answering questions faster than the other.
Although they have only been doing it for three years, Ms. Lee and Ms. Terhardt have proved to be a powerful duo, which is shown in the team’s enthusiasm and fantastic results this year. However, they continue to strive for better results for the future.
Ms. Terhardt says, “Our goal [next] year is to continue to have a really dedicated group of students who want to push themselves to hopefully do even better next year than we did this year; to either move up a division or to at least hold our first place again next year.”
The Academic Decathlon is also a valuable experience for its members as it teaches them important lessons and allows for good memories and friendships to form as they stick together throughout the whole process.
Kseniia Antipina (11) has already been competing in the academic decathlon for two years now, she says, “I like Academic Decathlon because we hang out after school and its with great teachers, Ms. Terhardt and Ms. Lee are really fun, and I have all my friends there so it’s really casual.”
Other than friends, Kseniia found that the competition had taught her many valuable skills that she can apply to other situations, like thinking critically under pressure and motivating herself to work harder for better results.
Recently, next year’s theme for the academic decathlon was revealed to be “The Roaring 20s” with “The Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzergerald as the assigned book. The team is especially excited for this fun theme, and look forward to working towards their goals.
