The Academic Decathlon team brought home a state title this year, their 12th in a row. The team is made up of all grades, and the students are organized into three teams, Honors, Scholastic, and Varsity, that are organized according to the student’s current GPA. Anyone can join if they have the dedication to study and commit.

“It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. And it takes a lot of dedication; you can’t just slack off. But overall you have to be willing to put in the effort and keep doing a good job,” senior Nathaniel Routh, a captain of the team, said.

The top two scorers for each team go into the team total, which is then judged against the other competing teams. The points are scored out of 1,000 per category, and just this year they had a close win at state by just 1,200 points, or two categories. Each category is made up of a multiple-choice test, and there are other categories that include impromptu speech, essay, interview and an assigned book.

“In AcaDec, an F is a good thing, a 500 is about average so you want to go for about a 600, 700 or even an 800,” senior Connor Crain, a captain, said.

Among the categories the team-members study and compete for are art, music, economics, language, literature, math and history. Each year has a different topic, and this past year’s was “The Age of Empires.” The organization provides them with study materials and then the members study on their own and as a team.

“The captain usually makes a study schedule to cut down the large amount of reading into more doable page numbers, like maybe five pages a night, break it down and [do] some practice tests to go along with the materials. We also do PowerPoints, where I have old ones that we use, plus students make new ones,” AcaDec sponsor Stan Stern said.

Even though the captains, Routh and Crain, admit that studying can be intense for both them and other team members, as well as easy to put off till the last minute, each year they seem to pull it off.

“You kind of get thrown in and you try to advise them on study habits that work. Repetition is key, you have to read stuff at least twice if you want to remember it. And also we try to give them certain amounts of time to study, and certain things to study,” Crain said. “You don’t want to study more than two hours a night if you’re just starting off or else your brain is going to get completely fried.”

The studying has paid off, and this April the team will travel to nationals in Albuquerque, New Mexico to compete for three days. But next year can the team keep up the streak and make it 13 wins?

“I think sometimes the kids feel pressure because they want to keep the streak going. It’s hard to do two things at the same time, trying to get people to do well and try to take the pressure off,” Stern said. “The best part of AcaDec is reading the material and learning so much.”