Woodbridge Warriors win OC Academic Decathlon
THE WOODBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC DECATHLON TEAM
By Irvine City News staff
Woodbridge High School’s Academic Decathlon team won the 49th annual Orange County Academic Decathlon title and is heading to Sacramento for the state-level competition. Woodbridge was named the winner Feb. 10 in the Bill Medley Auditorium at Santa Ana High School. The school prevailed over some 40 OC high schools competing, winning with a healthy margin of some 3,000 points over the second place school. The score places them in the top 10 in California, and the top 15 in the United States.
The Woodbridge team includes Seniors Angela Gadon, Sabrina Tubb, Farnoush Sohbati, Krupa Prajapati, Alan Huang and Paiam Moghaddam; Juniors William Tong, Emily Kim, Patrick Park and Daniel Kang; and Sophomores Hannah Hui and Kaaviya Sasikumar. William Tong had the highest overall score in the entire competition.
This is the first time Woodbridge HS has won the county Academic Decathlon title since 2006, though the school’s teams are perennial contenders.
The team came in third last year and in 2012, second in 2015 and 2014, and fourth in 2013, advancing to the state competition each year as one of the wild card teams invited based on high overall scores.
Founded in 1968 by former Orange County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Peterson, the first decathlon was held at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove in 1969.
Academic decathlons are 10-event scholastic contests staged at the county, state and national levels. Nine-member teams compete for the highest scores on multiple-choice exams, speeches, interviews and essay assignments, concluding with the Super Quiz Relay, a Jeopardy-like competition. Each team must include three “Honor” students (those with GPAs of 3.75 or above), three “Scholastic” students (GPAs of 3.00 to 3.74) and three “Varsity” students (GPAs of 2.99 or below).
This year’s academic theme is World War II. Students are tested in the areas of art, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, and social science. And less any adults out there imagine they could fare well in the competition, here are just a few of hundreds of topics from the 2016-17 curricula students are expected to master:
Good luck to Woodbridge High School Warriors at the March 23 competition in Sacramento!
The Woodbridge team includes Seniors Angela Gadon, Sabrina Tubb, Farnoush Sohbati, Krupa Prajapati, Alan Huang and Paiam Moghaddam; Juniors William Tong, Emily Kim, Patrick Park and Daniel Kang; and Sophomores Hannah Hui and Kaaviya Sasikumar. William Tong had the highest overall score in the entire competition.
This is the first time Woodbridge HS has won the county Academic Decathlon title since 2006, though the school’s teams are perennial contenders.
The team came in third last year and in 2012, second in 2015 and 2014, and fourth in 2013, advancing to the state competition each year as one of the wild card teams invited based on high overall scores.
Founded in 1968 by former Orange County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Peterson, the first decathlon was held at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove in 1969.
Academic decathlons are 10-event scholastic contests staged at the county, state and national levels. Nine-member teams compete for the highest scores on multiple-choice exams, speeches, interviews and essay assignments, concluding with the Super Quiz Relay, a Jeopardy-like competition. Each team must include three “Honor” students (those with GPAs of 3.75 or above), three “Scholastic” students (GPAs of 3.00 to 3.74) and three “Varsity” students (GPAs of 2.99 or below).
This year’s academic theme is World War II. Students are tested in the areas of art, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, and social science. And less any adults out there imagine they could fare well in the competition, here are just a few of hundreds of topics from the 2016-17 curricula students are expected to master:
- Art: Abstract Expressionism and the American Artistic Response to WWII
- Economics: International Capital Flows in an Open Economy
- Literature: Interpret W. H. Auden’s, “September 1, 1939”
- Mathematics: The Graph of a Linear Function y = ax + b
- Music: Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), by Aaron Copeland
- Social Science: Key features of Fascist ideology and practices
- Science: The Mathematics and Detection of Radioactive Decay
Good luck to Woodbridge High School Warriors at the March 23 competition in Sacramento!