By practicing every day during the school week, Academic Decathlon (ACADEC) prepared decathletes to secure a win at the fall scrimmage in Hershey, Pa. on November 9.
According to ACADEC head coach Phil Cerami, their first competition was very important for the team as it gave them insights into the team’s performance.
“It’s the first piece of data that we get for our team as to whether or not we will be in the running for the state title, which is our goal every year. It also gives new decathletes a taste of what a competition is like,” Cerami said.
During competitions, decathletes are tested on seven major subjects: art, economics, literature, math, music, science and social science. This gives the team valuable insight into how well they are preparing, allowing them to focus on weaker subjects to hone their skills.
On November 9, the team competed against Hershey High School, winning with an overall team score of 25,434 points.
This year, the team has changed how it practices, splitting into two groups: the growth and win groups.
The primary goal of these groups is for the team to focus on the decathletes who will go on to compete and work with the growth groups to prepare them for next year’s competition.
According to ACADEC coach Carolyn Scott, she thinks that this new approach will help the team greatly.
“The growth group is the team’s future as we prepare them to learn the new curriculum for next year. This allows students to get a good foundation for next year so that they can hopefully compete,” Scott said.
In ACADEC students are divided into groups based on their GPA levels: varsity, scholastic and honors.
According to Cerami, the team is looking for varsity-level students to join the team.
“Finding those varsity students can be challenging. What we want are passionate people. It may not be school, but they’re passionate about something,” Cerami said.
Cerami enjoys ACADEC because of the group dynamic and the community.
“The friendships that we make with each other [are] what drives the program and that’s why people are enthusiastic about learning things that they are not being graded for,” Cerami said.
Team captain Ryan Markus feels ACADEC is a “great experience” because he has learned new skills that he would not have learned at school, such as public speaking, speech and interview.
Markus also enjoys working with like-minded people and learning about new topics that he has not learned about before.
“I like that we are all there to support each other and that our goals for each other are that we all do our best,” Markus said. “This is not an individual competition, it’s a team competition.”
“We all are just there to have a good time,” Markus said. “A lot of us take it a lot more seriously than others, but you never have to take it that seriously.”
Decathlete Jaden Nguyen enjoys ACADEC because it does not feel like an extension of school but, rather,s a fun learning environment where everyone supports each other.