Trabuco Hills Finishes Second in O.C. Academic Decathlon

Trabuco Hills High finished best in class at the most recent Orange County Academic Decathlon, owing to the fact that winner Westminster High seems to be in a league of its own.

Westminster won the county's academic decathlon for the fourth time in five years. The awards were presented Thursday at Orange Coast College.

Westminster won the event with 44,565.6 points. Trabuco Hills (42,211.6) barely squeezed past Valencia (42,199.4) to take second place in the event that took place Jan. 29 to Feb. 5 at various county schools.

By finishing in the top three, Trabuco Hills will advance to the state finals in Sacramento on March 12.  Each advancing school received $2,000 toward paying for the trip to the state capital.

Members of the Trabuco Hills team are seniors Timothy Littman, Patricia Lee, Tegan Tingley, Leo Thom Kawile, Dhara Bhupendra Waghela and juniors Namratha Sathish, Sawyer Johnson and Eric Post.

The advisors are Viji Janardan, who teaches math, and John Spangler, who teaches English.

Division I, which includes the most successful schools from past decathlons based on average scores, featured Trabuco Hills in second, with the top five filled out by Valencia, Mission Viejo and Garden Grove.

Each student competes in a series of eight academic tests and demonstrations: mathematics, super quiz, science, language and literature, art, music, economics, essay, speech and interview.