Whole School Rejoices at Marshall’s First Place in Academic Decathlon

Members of the brainy team that John Marshall High School sent to Los Angeles’ fifth annual Academic Decathlon have been getting the star treatment on campus ever since it was announced over the school’s intercom--to wild cheers and applause--that the team won first place.

“Every class I went into, I got a standing ovation,” Greg Mitchell, a senior at the Los Feliz-Silver Lake high school, said of his not-so-typical day at school after the results were announced. Teammate and fellow senior Fred Upton got the same treatment, plus “high five” hand slaps in the hallways and congratulations “all over the place,” he happily recalled.

The team’s coach, English teacher Mary Sortino, received her share of glory, too, when she walked into the faculty dining room and her colleagues broke into applause. “Everybody was so excited,” she said.

Better Than Football Victory

Marshall High Principal Don Hahn said everybody at the school has been “flying high” because of the team’s victory over 52 other high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District at the citywide scholastic contest last month. “It’s much more exciting to me than winning a football championship. It’s more meaningful,” he said.

Besides the spontaneous congratulations, the team was honored at a special gathering of the faculty. A reception was also planned with representatives of the mayor’s office, the Los Angeles City Council, school board members and other school district officials.

The team, however, will not have time to rest on its laurels. Its six members, along with an alternate, are preparing for the state championship contest Jan. 3 at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana. There, 44 schools are expected to compete for the chance to go on to national competition.

Tests, Speeches

The decathlon consists of team members spending a day taking written tests in six subjects. They also give two speeches each, one prepared and the other extemporaneous, and are interviewed about themselves and their activities. They also must write an essay and participate as a team in a “super quiz,” in which members answer questions in turn. The last event, whose subject this year was U.S. immigration, is public.

Teams represent a range of grade averages. An attempt must be made to make the teams reflect the racial and sexual ratios at their schools. Points are tallied and announced about a week after the daylong competition.

Beverly Hills High School won the state contest the past two years and placed second nationally, both times behind Richardson High School in Texas. This week, Beverly Hills began its climb again, winning the countywide contest for schools outside the Los Angeles Unified School District.

La Canada Flintridge High School placed fourth in the county competition.

Cross Section of Grades

As in the local contests, the teams in the state and national tournaments will be made up of two A students, two B students and two C students. Team members are chosen on the basis of test scores, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and teacher recommendations. All of Marshall’s competitors are seniors and include four who have gone as far as the semifinals in the selection for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship.

For Marshall High, the victory in the Academic Decathlon is especially sweet. The school’s best showing in previous contests was last year, when it came in eighth. The best it had done before that was 12th, said Sortino, who has been team coach for two years.

Marshall scores consistently high in SAT and Advanced Placement tests and already enjoys a good reputation for its academic program. But it had not been touted as one of the teams most likely to unseat Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, the citywide gold medalist in all four other years since the contest began.

The Marshall team figured that it could make the top 10 again but that it had only an outside shot of climbing into the top five, “if we were lucky,” team member Eun Joo Whang said.

That prediction was way off the mark. Besides putting in a gold-medal performance in the overall competition, the team racked up four first-place finishes, in fine arts, language and literature, math, and science. It scored second in the economics and speech-making competitions.

3rd Overall

“We broke the monopoly,” said Fred, who ranked third among all 318 contestants. He also won five individual medals in the B division: a gold for highest overall score, two more golds in math and science and two bronze medals in economics and essay writing.

Although all team members are given the same tests, prizes are also awarded to individuals in each of the three grade categories.

“I knew I’d do well in math and science,” Fred said. “I had no idea about economics and the essay, and I never dreamed I’d win overall.”

Others on the team also won individual medals. Greg garnered a silver for overall performance in the C division, along with a gold in economics, a silver in science and a bronze in math. Carol Lin, who competed in the A division, won two silvers for economics and fine arts. Eun, C division, and Ellen Ahn, B division, walked away with silver and bronze medals, respectively, in fine arts.

Jeannette Woo, the sixth team member, won no individual medals but still put in a stellar performance, her teammates said. The team also lauded alternate Noemi Gutierrez, who rooted on the sidelines.

Repeat Performance

In the statewide competition, students will repeat the rigorous daylong exercises of local contests, including the super quiz.

Marshall did not perform as well in the Los Angeles super quiz, tying for fifth with three other schools. “I feel responsible,” Sortino said. “I just didn’t give them enough material.” Sortino has already begun to make up for that, handing out plenty of reading assignments since Thanksgiving.

To prepare for the next competition, Sortino said, the team’s members will have to spend more time boning up on their own, besides participating in group study sessions.

For the local contest, the team met every school day for intensive cramming in a special class that lasted two hours at the beginning of the school semester and stretched into four hours as the competition drew near. Some of the team members also held an “encyclopedia party,” where they “took all the encyclopedias off the shelf and started looking up everything we could,” said Carol, the hostess.

‘Went to the Library’

Other than those preparations, Carol said, the students “went to the library, went to the library, went to the library.”

Two weeks before the contest the team held a “scrimmage” against the University High team. Marshall won.

Sortino praised her team as the “most talented” Marshall High has ever had. Three of the members--Ellen, Eun and Fred--were on last year’s eighth-place team. Ellen is 16; the rest are 17. All say they plan to go to college.

“This happens to be an academically dynamic team” who worked “like maniacs” to get ready for the contest, Sortino said.