Taft High Wins 2nd Academic Decathlon : Education: Woodland Hills wonder students capture national championship by more than 2,000 points.

NEWARK, N. J. —  In taking top honors in the 13th annual U. S. Academic Decathlon, the nine jubilant students from Taft High School Sunday declared a glorious day for their school, their district, their city, their state--heck, maybe even their planet.

The Woodland Hills wonder students earned a score of 49,372, beating the closest team in the 10-event battle of the brains by more than 2,000 points and capturing more than half the $30,000 in scholarships awarded to individual students.

Taft senior Daniel Berdichevsky, 17, also claimed the tournament’s highest individual accolade, earning the top overall score and a $5,000 scholarship.

“We put everything into it and we got everything out of it,” Daniel said. “Everything we’ve been trying to do for the past year is win the national championship and we’ve done it.”

This was Taft’s second national championship. The school’s team took home a first-place prize in 1989 and second-place honors last year. Although Taft is not the first school to walk off with top honors twice, the sweetness of winning the prize for an embattled public school district wasn’t lost on the crowd present for the awards ceremony at the Robert Treat Hotel in downtown Newark.

“New Jersey spends $12,000 per student,” said Dan Isaacs, assistant superintendent of school operations for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “California spends just more than $4,600.”

Mountain View High School of Mesa, Ariz., took second place with 47,098 points, and Oliver Wendell Holmes High School in San Antonio came in third with 46,885 points.

The nine Taft students began their arduous journey to the academic showdown last summer by competing with their classmates for a spot on the team.

They took practice tests every day after school, studied over holidays and weekends to successfully wind their way through the local and then the state competition in Stockton last month.

The group arrived in New Jersey as the team to beat, having won the highest scores ever at the LAUSD contest and the best score among the 42 state competitions in country this year.

Taft also revived their secret weapon: Coach Arthur Berchin, who left the team after leading it to its last national title, returned for this year’s team.

Although the students went into the national finals with high expectations, they knew nothing was certain; higher stakes meant a higher level of competition. The students in New Jersey this weekend, the Taft teen-agers pointed out, were among the best in the country.

Even Taft’s tie for first place at Saturday’s high-stakes Super Quiz, in which each student answers five oral questions before an audience of peers and parents, assured only that the group was still in the running. Scores on the nine other tests were not revealed until Sunday’s agonizingly long awards ceremony.

After a light lunch, an announcer plodded through the list of 300-plus awards.

Students were recognized for the highest scores in each of the 10 subjects--essay, speech, interview, math, fine arts, economics, science, literature, social studies and Super Quiz. There are also awards for regional leaders, small-school high scorers, individual scholarship winners and highest-scoring students from each school.

As student after student marched through the crowded hotel ballroom to receive a prize, the Taft team cheered their own successes and twittered nervously each time one of the other top teams’ names was called.

Daniel, who also won four subject medals, hummed “O, Canada.” Stephen Shaw, 16, who would take three subject medals, sat motionless, with his hands clasped in his lap. Rebecca Rissman, 17, who won three medals, tried to smile. And Michael Michrowski, 17, who won two medals, rested his face in his palms. Also competing for Taft was Andrew Salter, 17, who took home four subject medals; Chris Huie, 17, with two individual medals; Sage Vaughn, 17, with one medal, and Sheldon Peregrino, 18.

Their parents and supporters, 68 in all, moved closer and closer to the children as the tension grew.

“How can I not be nervous?” asked Daniel’s mother, Rosie Berdichevsky, when she unglued her eye from the lens of her camcorder. “I put myself in his place and feel what he must be feeling. It’s nice and it’s terrible.”

But once the individual high scorers were announced, with California claiming five out of nine awards, the teen-agers’ grim expressions gradually gave way to glee.

Finally, Kimberly Shapiro, 16, said it: “I know we’re going to win, now. Girls know things that boys don’t know.”

Coaches from other schools began to console their students, like coach Larry Minkoff, from Whitney Young Magnet School in Chicago, who told his students that they were all winners.

A downtrodden Tukoi Jarrett, who won a gold medal for speech, would have none of that.

“Then how come I feel like a loser?” he asked.

But all conversation in the ballroom was soon drowned out by the screams and howls of the Taft contingent, when the school’s name was finally called out as the finest academic team in the country.

“There’s nothing like first place,” Berchin said.