AcaDeca - Part III - The Super Quiz

When I return from changing clothes, Science scores are up. Here, we have clearly won, hands down. Mike, I think, got at least a silver medal. The only event left is the Super Quiz.
Those unfortunates who have never witnessed the Super Quiz have no idea how exciting and intense it can be, but I will attempt to capture the flavor. One member of each team sits at a desk up at the front of the room. The speaker reads a question relating to the quiz topic—this year, it was e-communication and e-commerce. The question is also shown on an overhead projector, for the audience. The students at the desk then have 5 seconds to mark their answer on a paper. When time is called, the answer is given, and if a student got the question correctly, then a point is added to his team’s scoreboard. The scoreboards keep a running tally, so you can see every team’s board, and thus how far ahead – or behind – you are.
First up is A.R. (I’m referring to people by their initials). He does pathetically. We end up down by two points.
Next would be J.L., except that she is sick. We sit in the audience and watch the other teams’ leads increase by two more points, without any contest from our booth.
Then A.A. comes to the rescue, cutting the lead to three.
N.P. does respectably, but so do the other teams. The margin remains unchanged.
L.H. goes up, and cuts the lead to two on the second question. Unfortunately, by the time her time is up, it’s back to three points again.
A.G. has no effect. At one point, his scorer fails to recognize his correct answer to an easy question, and we in the back get really mad at him. Luckily, he points out her error to her, and a potential point loss is averted. We remain down by three points as the Quiz enters the final three rounds.
E.J. scores three, but so does the team in front. I am now up.
First question: I get it, they don’t. Lead down to two. Second: we both miss. Third: their lead narrows by a point again. This is followed by a mutual correct answer, and then a mutual loss. Their lead is down to one point. M.C. comes up for the final round.
On his first question, he ties us with the other team. We are ecstatically jumping around in our seats, yelling our team cheer at him and each other: “Don’t suck!” Seriously.
Then, to our horror, he misses the third question, and we fall behind again. He and the other team both get the next one, and it comes down to the last question. Unsurprisingly, the question itself is really difficult. Our fingers are crossed. . . or, more specifically, our fingers are forming the sign language for our answer choices, which we show to each other.
The other team misses it. . . and so does Mike. Oh, well. We end up with second place, tied with our main rival in the tournament.

BUT. . .

Overall, we win the entire tournament, by 2500 points over the second-place team. In addition, I have the second highest point total out of everyone. . . also very good.
It is not until a few days later, though, that I actually start to believe that we actually did it.

Now, how's that for a Saturday?

AcaDeca - Part II - Testing and Speeches

After gorging ourselves on doughnuts (two of which I unwittingly bought from Safeway before we left), we return to the test room, and attempt the Math test. Math this year covered algebra, geometry, and statistics. Guess which part we suck at? So, it’s impossible. I deal with this by telling myself that all the other schools must be having a hard time with it, too. They give us calculators to help us, and I unintentionally pocket mine and walk off with it.
Seriously, it was an accident.
Next is music, the one test which I seriously studied for. It’s difficult, but I come away with a good feeling about it. It’s on country music, so of course there’s the obligatory snickering when they play the clips of the songs, like “I Walk The Line.”
The academic testing concludes with science, which covers Physics For Dummies. I don’t know how hard they thought it would be to figure out that mirrors reflect light, but they clearly overestimated. My favorite question: “When red light falls on a blue book. . . C) It becomes invisible.” Of course, questions like that are interspersed with impossible ones about the movement of sound in a hollow tube sealed at one end, and other such stuff.

We head back for lunch, and see the rest of the scores from the first block of testing. We did okay, not very well on Econ. On the whole, I would classify our performance as “respectable.”
On the other hand, though, I would classify the performance of everyone else as “questionable.”
We clearly are retaining our lead, with half of the events scored.

Odds: 2:1 against

At the end of lunch, Math goes up. We did okay, I’m fairly disappointed with my own performance. On the plus side, Simon nets himself an 800, and a gold medal. Again, we stay ahead of everyone else, sort of.
The next event, second to last, is the speech competition. For this we need to change into nice clothes. I find myself a nice, secluded, and clean bathroom to change in, where I can practice being Laocoon without random people walking in on me.
My holding room is the planetarium again. I wait in there for about an hour before I am finally called out. I see a huge audience in my room, watching the speaker before me. Cool, I think. I work well with large audiences. The speaker leaves. The ENTIRE audience leaves with her. I am crushed.
I make up for it, however, by giving one of the best speeches of my career. Perfect timing, perfect eye contact, perfect everything. The judges are clearly impressed. I practically strut back to the cafeteria.

They are posting music scores as I walk in. I go over to wait by our scoreboard. A boy from Concord and his coach are anxiously watching. It seems that his score, 640, is keeping him in third place, behind a 660 and a 700. I close my eyes as they come to my score. I open them: 680. I turn, grinning, to the Concord people. “Sorry about that,” I say.
Oh, but victory can be sweet.

Odds: 1:1 - It’s about at this point that I begin to think that we could actually win this thing.

AcaDeca - Part I - Arrival

The Academic Decathlon - Saturday, February 2nd

The day started out rather badly. I woke up with. . . intestinal difficulties, shall we say. In addition, one of our Scholastic players would be competing with a fever. Finally, the parent of our strongest Varsity phoned us at 6:15 to tell us that she had an awful migraine and could not get out of bed, much less compete.

Odds: 10:1 against

We get to the competition, clad in our "We Like Shiny Things" shirts, and claim our tables. Testing this year is no longer in one big gym, but instead in multiple, smaller classrooms. I get to be in the planetarium. First is Art. Art is impossible. I know maybe 5 out of the 50 questions, and guess on the rest. My favorite question: "[some guy] is famous in art history for B) Killing Leonardo DaVinci"

Odds: 15:1 against

After Art comes Econ. Total bomb. I suck, and I can tell immediately. Way too many buzzwords. One hilarious question: "An increase in the federal money supply causes D) Higher fertility rates"
Next is Language and Literature. It's easier; I'm better prepared. The coolest part was when one of the questions was to identify the speaker of a quote. . . a quote whose author I had been trying to identify for weeks!

After these first three tests, we return to the cafeteria, where we are served free Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the World's Worst Orange Juice. I also notice the scores.
AcaDeca consists of ten events, each graded out of 1000 points. The scores for interview and essay are already posted, and I go over to look.
It happens that we are already so far ahead of every other team (about 21) that I go dancing back to the tables. On our A team alone, 5 out of our 9 competitors have a 900 or better on interview, and eight people are above 800. On the essay, 7 people are above 800. This is very, very good, and I am having trouble containing my enthusiasm. After all, we still have 8 events to get through, and we’re now down a player.
They post Art scores.
Average score for all teams, roughly 450.
Average score for Miramonte, roughly 550.
Eddie, the brilliant sophomore, scored 700, earning himself the gold medal.

Odds: 5:1 against.