Academic Decathlon has been around for quite a while. It was founded in 1981 in California. Those readers who didn’t stopped reading at the word ‘academic’ probably still have little to no clue what ‘AcaDeca’, as it is called, even is. Hence the purpose of this article: to lead a discovery of Academic Decathlon—the unknown ‘sport’.
All right, you athletic nuts may be right, maybe AcaDeca isn’t a sport, but the reality is Alliance High School’s Academic Decathlon Team has been so consistently successful in competition that its record would rival any of the Bulldog athletic teams. Still, most of the student body doesn’t even know AHS has a team; therefore, no one is expecting pep rallies in honor of state meets, but there is no reason for the school to not grab hold of the readily available school pride the team provides.
The team intensively studies every aspect of one specific time period. They then travel to and compete in tests about the social studies, art, music, language and literature, economics, math, and science of the time period. Alliance’s team has a successful track record, making it to State the last four years and even competing in the national medium school competition last year. Friday and Saturday, February 17 and 18, the team competed at State in Omaha once again. At the state level subjective tests are also added—these include an essay, speech, and interview test. Alliance took second in the medium school division and team high-scorer, Jett Jurgens, brought home silver medals in art and essay. When asked about his Academic Decathlon experience Jett said, “It’s been a great learning experience and I am proud to be part of the team.”
Alliance’s Academic Decathlon team is nothing new—it was started sometime in the 90’s—yet people seem to be unaware that AHS has a team, let alone a perennial state-qualifying team. This school has produced some very successful academic and arts teams. While these aren’t all exactly audience events, this is a school after all. Academics and the arts should come first and the members of AcaDeca deserve recognition for being at the top of their competition field. Coach, Patricia Jones, said, “The beauty of Academic Decathlon is that it allows students with a love of learning to study a specific topic much more in depth than what is possible in the classroom.”