KINNELON HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC DECATHLON TEAM ASCENDS TO STATE CHAMPIONSHIP

On Saturday, February 1, 2014 the Kinnelon Academic Decathlon Team competed in the Region II Competition at Ramapo High School.  At “Regionals”, the KHS team placed an impressive fourth, and that performance earned them a wild card entry into the State Competition, which was held on March 1st at Morris Knolls High School.

The Academic Decathlon is a series of interscholastic competitions for high school teams nationwide. The Decathlon encourages, recognizes and rewards academic effort and excellence. Over 50 New Jersey teams compete in the Regional Competitions, and the Regional winners take part in the State Competition a few weeks later.  The Decathlon competition consists of the following 10 events: six written, multiple choice tests (math, science, social sciences, economics, literature, and fine arts), a speech, written essay, interview by a panel of business persons and the culminating event - Super Quiz-a fast paced, live question and answer event.  Each year there is a topic, and in 2014 it was World War I.  All of the tests were based on that topic.

Many teams that qualify for “States” have a class for Academic Decathlon at school, giving them a huge advantage, while KHS has an “AcDec” club, which meets after school weekly, under the guidance of the team’s long time coach, Ms. Linda Johnson.  The KHS team includes a majority of seniors and a few juniors.  The team members competing were:  Lara Balick, Brittany Boykas, Brooke Boykas, Carina Chien, Kate Coppa, Michelle Ditzig, Ariella Goldberg, Gabriel Goldberg, Cristian Graupe, Connor Horton, Nikolai Narma, MIchael Prapopulos, Allie Rosenberg, Nicholas Shah, Elizabeth Smith, Karolina Strumska and Marta Wszeborowska.  Connor Horton earned the Gold Award as the highest scoring Honors decathlete in Region II.  The team won numerous medals at Regionals including Gold medals by:  Lara Balick, Brittany Boykas, Gabriel Goldberg, Nicholai Narma, Michael Prapopulos, Nicholas Shah, and Karolina Strumska.The KHS team made a strong showing in the State Championship for which they credit the leadership and experience of Coach Linda Johnson.