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Academic Decathlon Team Wins Individual Medals at Competition
Academic Decathlon Team Wins Individual Medals at Competition
After two days of competition, the Sage Hill Academic Decathlon team received multiple individual medals at an awards ceremony at Santa Ana High School on February 9.
This year’s competition took place on Saturday, January 27 at Tustin High School and Saturday, February 3 at Westminster High School. Sage Hill competed against about 40 other high schools in Orange County. On day one, our decathletes wrote an essay, performed both a prepared and an impromptu speech, and participated in an individual interview with a panel of judges. On day two, the students took 30-minute multiple-choice tests in the subject areas of art, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, economics, and social science. Each area, with the exception of mathematics, was based on this year’s curricular focus of Africa.
The competition is geared towards juniors and seniors, but the top 12 students from each team are typically chosen to compete. Sage Hill ended up using 10 students in the competition. Here are the competitors and results from this year’s Academic Decathlon competition:
Seniors
Emma Rafatjoo (captain of the Sage Hill team) – 5th place in Economics
Farooq Ansari – 1st place in Interview with a perfect score (he was one of 12 that achieved this out of about 500 competitors), 2nd place in Mathematics, 4th place in Science, and 1st place in Economics
Brooklyn Button – 5th place in Economics and 4th place in Speech
Juliet Farkas – 1st place in Mathematics
Cameron Slater – 2nd place in Economics
James Wang – 5th place in Mathematics
Jeffrey Xing – 4th place in Mathematics
Sophomores
Timothy Guo – 5th place in Mathematics and 5th place in Social Science. He will serve as co-captain for the 2018-2019 team.
Melodie Qian – 3rd place in Science
Ava Asmani provided great leadership and will serve as co-captain for the 2018-2019 team.
Emma Rafatjoo (captain of the Sage Hill team) – 5th place in Economics
Farooq Ansari – 1st place in Interview with a perfect score (he was one of 12 that achieved this out of about 500 competitors), 2nd place in Mathematics, 4th place in Science, and 1st place in Economics
Brooklyn Button – 5th place in Economics and 4th place in Speech
Juliet Farkas – 1st place in Mathematics
Cameron Slater – 2nd place in Economics
James Wang – 5th place in Mathematics
Jeffrey Xing – 4th place in Mathematics
Sophomores
Timothy Guo – 5th place in Mathematics and 5th place in Social Science. He will serve as co-captain for the 2018-2019 team.
Melodie Qian – 3rd place in Science
Ava Asmani provided great leadership and will serve as co-captain for the 2018-2019 team.
Preparation for the Academic Decathlon largely takes place on an individual basis throughout the school year. In May, the next curricular focus will be announced and by June study guides will be available for students to start studying for the 2018-2019 competition.
“We have meetings to address the bigger issues, but each student is responsible for reviewing the study guides that the school provides for them on their own,” said Clayton Hatfield, faculty advisor for the team.
The first informal event of the year is a scrimmage in November that gives the students an idea about their scores in the events.
“The Academic Decathlon team benefitted this year from the strong leadership of our captain, senior Emma Rafatjoo,” Hatfield said. “All of our members spent countless hours preparing for the different events. I applaud all of decathletes’ hard work and dedication throughout the competition season.”
Sage Hill School
Sage Hill School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. The School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship programs, and athletic and other School administered programs.