L.A. High Wins District’s Super Quiz for 3rd Year

Los Angeles High School won the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Super Quiz portion of the Academic Decathlon for the third consecutive year Saturday, while Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills Estates and Wilson High in Hacienda Heights tied for first in a similar contest for Los Angeles County schools.

Alemany High School in Mission Hills captured its fifth consecutive overall decathlon victory among 18 other Southern California private schools Saturday night.

Alemany scored 48,645 points out of a possible 60,000. St. Francis in La Canada Flintridge ranked second, with 43,550, followed by the Rose & Alex Pilibos Armenian School in Hollywood with 36,775 points.

For city and county public schools, the Super Quiz is like the Super Bowl of academia, said Steve Horowitz, spokesman for the Los Angeles County School District.

“Every time their team got the right answers, the spectators would jump and hoot and holler just like it was a real Super Bowl,” he said.

The Super Quiz is the final portion of 10 academic tests in the Academic Decathlon competition and can be a good indicator of who will be the overall winner.

Each school sends three teams: The varsity, representing students with a grade-point average of 2.99 or lower; the scholastic team, with a grade average between 3.0 and 3.74; and the honors team, with a grade average of 3.75 or above.

In the Los Angeles school district competition, all 59 schools participated in mental jousting at UCLA’s Wooden Center. Los Angeles High scored 51 points out of a possible 60, with El Camino coming in second with 48. Third-place Marshall High in Silver Lake scored 47 points.

In the county system, in which 60 of 80 high schools participated, multiple teams shared the first three places. Coming in second place were Burbank High School, Rowland High in Rowland Heights and South High School in Torrance, all scoring 40 points. Third place went to Torrance High and Arcadia High, each scoring 39.

The winners of the overall competition for each district will go to the state contest March 17-19 in Los Angeles. The national competition is April 14-16 in San Antonio.