Torrey Pines Seniors Third in State Academic Contest

A team of Torrey Pines High School seniors took third place in last weekend’s statewide academic decathlon, a scholastic olympics for high school students. The students also won 17 medals for their individual performances during the competition--more than any other team.

“We’re really pretty happy,” said Blaze Newman, an English teacher who served as the team’s coach. “But there were some mixed feelings--disappointment that we didn’t win combined with happiness that we won so many individual medals and relief about not having to study anymore.”

The annual event, which was held in Sacramento, pitted the San Diego team against students from 48 other counties. Teams composed of two “A,” two “B” and two “C” students competed in 10 events, including multiple-choice tests in fine arts, language and literature, math, science, history and economics; essay writing; speech making; interviewing, and a game show style event known as the Super Quiz.

Top honors went Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley. Taft will represent California at the national decathlon in San Antonio at the end of April. Roosevelt High School in Fresno came in second.

Although it didn’t win the event, the Torrey Pines team made an impressive showing. One of the students, Sascha Dublin, received the highest score overall of any student in the competition and was the only participant to get a perfect score on the math test. Jeff Wright was the overall high scorer among the “C” students and Heather Chung was the third-highest scorer among the “B” students.