AcaDec Tries For Fourteenth Win
After school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Academic Decathalon team can be found tucked away in Room 193. They may be eating snacks provided by sponsor Stan Stern, watching a PowerPoint, or taking a practice test. At home, more studying is done to prepare for the State competition this weekend.
“I study a lot in gifted, and usually once or twice a week I won’t have anything to do at home so I’ll spend like two hours studying,” junior Isaac Lanan said.
Team members are given a “huge binder” with topics to study for the test.
“You just have to read all the stuff so you know it. There’s not much else, just read over and over a lot. We have meetings where people on the team will make a powerpoint over what they’re best at and they teach everyone else what it is so that we can understand it,” Lanan said.
The test has 10 categories: art, music, economics, math, science, social studies, and literature are covered in an objective multiple choice test. The test consists of 50questions, and students have 30 minutes to complete it. The questions on the test are related to this year’s topic, which is World War I. Team members studied WWI and other subjects of that time period.
The students also are interviewed, present a prepared speech, and are given 50 minutes to write an essay from three prompts.
South’s Academic Decathlon team has won the state championship 13 years in row. This year, if the team wins they will compete in Hawaii.
“I think it will be harder than most years… everyone is more motivated and the competition is way more stressful than it has been before,” Lanan said.
This means that the team will need to study even more than usual. Stern,says the team cannot study enough for the upcoming competition.
“[They need to do] as much [studying] as they can do in the next two weeks,” Stern said.
Stern also thinks the team should feel good about the outcome, no matter what.
“I’m confident that we’ve learned a lot and people are trying hard. When you do that you should always feel good, no matter what happens. We did win the regional tournament so that helps and gives us some confidence we can go with,” Stern said.
