Courtesy of Academic Decathlon Coach
The VHS Academic Decathlon team traveled to State this past week and competed against schools from around the state in 10 individual competitive areas, culminating in a live Super Quiz event where they squared up against other teams on stage in front of an audience. Students in this event are given 10 seconds to answer each question and make their selection before the buzzer, and are only allowed to compete in their category. This meant that our lone Varsity Decathlete Kassidy Ferguson competed in this event onstage by herself during her category, and ended up with a total of 9 out of 13 questions correct, which along with the performance of our Scholastic and Honors members took our team to win 2nd place in the Super Quiz event. Way to go, Valdez!
What a week! We thankfully made it out in time on Wednesday before the pass closed the next morning. The days at UAA were busy, as the mornings consisted of back-to-back subject area tests, with quick rushes back to the hotel to change into speech and interview attire for the afternoon competition. The one evening of downtime on Thursday afforded our team the opportunity to attend SIX! The Musical as part of the Broadway in Alaska series at the Performing Arts Center, and this was a blast!
Overall, our team performed very well and this coach is so pleased with their individual performances, particularly considering over half of our team is new members. Of the 9 students we brought to compete at state, only 3 had attended before, and one had studied with us last year but did not attend state. We did not have a full team to compete, as our Varsity category has 1 student, so I was not expecting to place in the overall team scoring (as it happens, we came in 4th for our division, and the winning 3 teams ahead of us were all full teams). We would love to see a full team for next year’s competition, as our individual scoring points are strong and give us a good shot at Nationals in 2025!
Team makeup:
Honors – Oliver Ownbey, Erik Vincent, Jenna Wadsworth
Scholastic – Will Crater, Aysiri Shiujones, Ava Mitchell, Jezelle Eskilida (alternate), Cersei Strickland (alternate)
Varsity – Kassidy Ferguson
Special thanks to our Team Chaperone, Matt Wadsworth!
Total medals earned: A whopping 25!
Medals and Awards
Alaska 529 Rural Scholarship Recipient: Cersei Strickland
Top Scoring Team Member for Valdez: Erik Vincent
Varsity Awards:
Kassidy Ferguson – Economics (SILVER), Science (GOLD), Literature (BRONZE), Music (SILVER), Essay (BRONZE)
Scholastic Awards:
Will Crater – Mathematics (BRONZE), Economics (SILVER), Science (BRONZE), Literature (BRONZE), Art (BRONZE), Music (SILVER), Social Science (BRONZE), Speech (BRONZE)
Aysiri Shiujones – Literature (GOLD), Music (BRONZE), Essay (SILVER)
Ava Mitchell – Mathematics (GOLD)
Honors Awards:
Oliver Ownbey – Music (SILVER), Interview (SILVER)
Erik Vincent – Mathematics (GOLD), Economics (SILVER), Music (GOLD), Social Science (BRONZE), Interview (BRONZE)
