Senior Haley Chavez stood amongst several students on the Lamar High School auditorium stage to receive a medal for scoring high in the interview portion. Fellow teammates rose from their seats and cheered. In unison, they yelled “yeaaaa boiii.”
After competing in the District Invitational, the Academic Decathlon team traveled to Lamar High School for the regional meet on Jan. 20-21. Students like senior Alex Rodriguez tested in ten different categories relating to World War II: art, mathematics, economics, music, science, social studies, language arts, essay, interview and speech. The team will advance to the state meet Feb. 23-26 in El Paso.
“I feel really good after our regional meet,” Rodriguez said. “I am very satisfied with the way the team performed, but I also see room for self-improvement. My hopes for state are to improve on my science and math scores, along with working with the team to improve our ranking.”
The team is broken down into three different levels: Varsity, Scholastic and Honors. Each team consists of three members and one alternate. In class, team members like junior Margaret Vo read from informational packets, take practice tests and online DemiDec quizzes throughout the semester. Likewise, each subject requires at least one or two weeks to cover. Vo joined AcaDec to help her studying habits.
“The class taught me to accept my mistakes and confusion as a sign of progress and learning rather than beat myself up for them,” Vo said. “As long as we try our best — and have fun — the outcome doesn’t really matter.”
Senior Hannah Garcia placed first for a perfect score in speech for the Scholastic team, and Chavez medaled in the interview portion for the Varsity team. AcaDec plans to prepare for state by continuing the in-class quizzes, re-reading the material in the study guides and going over printed copies of the regional tests.
“There were some setbacks that we had with new, really, really, competitive teams coming into our region that are national powerhouses — state powerhouses,” AcaDec Sponsor Mr. Davis said. “It’s very tough to motivate yourself, and I think [they] did a really good job of motivating yourself in spite of knowing what kind of competition [they] were going to face.”
