El Camino Real Prevails in Academic Decathlon

For the third consecutive year, El Camino Real High School of Woodland Hills won the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Academic Decathlon on Thursday, putting the school into position to defend its state title.

The victory marked the school’s fifth city championship in the 17-year history of the event.

San Fernando Valley schools have won eight of the 16 contests, and have dominated in recent years. Local rival Taft High School, also in Woodland Hills, has won the tournament four times. The two schools have won five of the last six and eight of the last 10 decathlons for the city’s public schools.

But this year, Taft placed sixth, and two surprise contenders from the central city rounded out the medal winners. Garfield High School of East Los Angeles won second place, and Belmont High near downtown placed third.

El Camino Real scored 50,099 points out of a possible 60,000, outscoring Garfield by about 5,000 points.

El Camino has won the state championship two years in a row and will vie for its third consecutive title next month at Cal Poly Pomona.

The El Camino students also have distinguished themselves on the national level. The high school placed second last year at the U.S. Academic Decathlon, the nation’s premier academic competition for high school students.

El Camino Real coach Mark Johnson said the students had been studying from 2:30 to 10 p.m. for a month and had spent more than 100 hours apiece over Christmas vacation, preparing for the challenge.

“I’m so proud of how hard these kids worked. Every year they expect us to be right up at the top,” he said.

“We’ll give them [a break of] about three or four days and then hit it hard again,” he said, in preparation for the state contest.

El Camino’s Nancy Fu was the top scoring individual student in the 10-event contest. Steve Chae of El Camino took second, and Nishanth Rajan of Palisades Charter High School placed third.

Fu, a 16-year-old sophomore, whose neck was ringed with ribbons supporting her eight medals in individual categories, said, “I really concentrated. I didn’t fall asleep like I usually do when I study.”

Her father, Austin Fu, an immigrant from Taiwan, called her “an American dream come true. As immigrants, we cannot teach her English, so we encouraged her to read books.”

The other members of the winning El Camino decathlon team are: Taimur Baig, Michael Beatty, Nahyun Hwang, Bruce Ngo, Elana Pelman, Carina Yuen and Adi Zarchi.

In five previous runs for the national title, El Camino placed second in 1996 and 1997 after finishing fourth in 1992.

Taft is the only Valley school to take the national title, having won in 1989 and 1994. Taft finished second at the nationals in 1988 and 1993.

All the national winners of the decathlon, since the event began in 1981, have come from Texas or California.

Academic Decathlon teams have nine members. Three members with grade-point averages of 3.75 to 4.0 compete in the Honor Division. Three with grade-point averages of 3.74 to 3.0 compete in the Scholastic Division, and three with averages of 2.99 or below compete in the Varsity Division.

The students take comprehensive tests in science, social science, mathematics, music, literature, art and language. They also deliver a speech, write an essay and are interviewed by a panel of decathlon judges.

The final event is the Super Quiz--40 multiple-choice questions followed by a team question-and-answer session.

Roosevelt High School won the “most improved” award this year among the 59 competing teams. The East Los Angeles high school finished 15th, a jump of 34 places from last year’s contest.

Times staff writers Martha Willman and Miles Corwin contributed to this story.