Students compete to travel to Hawaii in this year’s Decathlon

Posted 3/4/14

This Sunday, teams of students from 19 Rhode Island high schools will compete in the 31st annual Rhode Island Academic Decathlon. The winning team will have the chance to escape the cold and travel …

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Students compete to travel to Hawaii in this year’s Decathlon

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This Sunday, teams of students from 19 Rhode Island high schools will compete in the 31st annual Rhode Island Academic Decathlon. The winning team will have the chance to escape the cold and travel to Hawaii to represent the state in the United States Academic Decathlon national competition this April.

The Rhode Island competition will be held at the Knight Campus of the Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick starting at 9 a.m. this Sunday, March 9. More than 220 students (up to nine per team plus alternates) are expected to participate in this year’s competition, and over 120 volunteers come together to make this event possible.

The highlight of the competition is the Super Quiz, which will start at 4:30 p.m. in CCRI’s Bobby Hackett Auditorium.

This year, the Super Quiz’s format has changed. Three members of the team will take to the floor at a time and work together to answer a series of questions before the audience of cheering teammates and spectators. In prior years, students would take individual turns answering five questions (on paper).

The topic of this year’s Super Quiz is World War I.

For the first time, team performance in the Super Quiz will not be counted toward their overall team score to determine the winning team. This late afternoon event will now serve as a showcase to which the public can attend and see the work that these students put into competition. There will still be a first, second and third place ranking for the Super Quiz, but it is only for bragging rights.

“It’s more for fun,” said RI Academic Decathlon executive director Sue Melaragno. “They can kind of take a breath at that point now. All their hard work is done.”

The overall team scores are calculated based on the team members’ individual performances on 10 academic tests taken through the day. Areas of competition include math, science, economics, music, language and literature, art, social science, essay, interview and speech. The interview and speech portions are done in front of a panel of volunteer judges; essays were written and submitted online for judging last week.

Decathlon team members receive a ranking of A, B or C, with team members having the opportunity to win medals in each area of competition. Competitors’ individual scores are combined to create the overall team score, which determines the final ranking.

Immediately following the Super Quiz will be the awards ceremony, presenting individual bronze, silver and gold medals to the students who scored the highest in each academic discipline. Typically, seniors who win gold medals are awarded $500 scholarships from the Speaker of the House at a State House reception in May. The winning team will be announced during the Awards Ceremony.

In addition to student awards, principals and coaches are recognized during the ceremony and the top ranking speeches will be delivered for the audience.

This year, the “Making Strides” award will be presented to the decathlon team with the most improved placement from last year’s event. This is the first year that award will be presented. It was created in memory of Dr. Augustine Capotosto, the Academic Decathlon Executive Board’s first vice president who did much to promote the event and recognize the value of academics.

During the 2013 Rhode Island Academic Decathlon, the winning team came from Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick. However, their margin of victory was less than the value of two questions (76-point difference out of over 36,000 possible points), so the state organization decided to help send the second place Johnston High School team to nationals in Minnesota as well.

Both Hendricken and Johnston High teams are returning to this year’s competition, along with teams from Warwick Veterans Memorial High School, Toll Gate High School, Pilgrim High School and Cranston High School West.

The Rhode Island Academic Decathlon operates on a $54,000 budget raised though individual and corporate contributions and a Senate legislative grant. The funds are used for testing materials, running the annual competition, purchasing awards and covering $8,000 of the cost of sending the winning team to the national contest.

Academic Decathlon is open to all public, private and parochial schools in the state.

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