Feature Editor
South Pasadena High School’s Academic Decathlon placed first in Los Angeles County for the second consecutive year to finish ahead of more than 60 schools at the two-part regional competition.
The team’s results were announced two weeks after the initial section of the competition at the award ceremony on February 10. The team scored 55,373.9 points out of 60,000, exceeding their total point count from the year.
“We were fairly confident, but in Decathlon you can’t really know for certain what place you’re going to get,” junior Tim An said. “For me personally, I was extremely nervous from the beginning of the awards ceremony up until the end when we found out that we had won.” Junior Anthony Chen earned the third highest individual score among hundreds of competitors with a total of 9,026.4 out of 10,000 points.
“We were relieved and happy because all of our hard work had paid off,” An said. “Still, we can’t let the victory go to our heads. We have to work hard and maintain this momentum going into state.”
The team managed to score more points than last year’s record-breaking 52,572.5 points despite losing five seniors. Ten schools from Los Angeles County will advance to the California state Academic Decathlon competition in Sacramento from March 17 to 20.
“The team is more motivated as a result of our successes last year,” An said. “We want to work as hard as possible in order to surpass the achievements of last year’s team.
