San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools (SBCSS) is pleased to announce the winners of the 40th annual San Bernardino County Academic Decathlon Competition. The awards ceremony honoring 18 high school teams, took place on Feb. 9.
“These incredibly talented and hard-working students committed hundreds of hours preparing for this year’s academic decathlon,” said County Superintendent Ted Alejandre. “It is an honor to not only recognize them for all their hard work but also recognize their support systems and coaches for helping them excel in the competition.”
The three teams with the highest overall scores this year are:
- 1st place: Chaffey High School
- 2nd place: Redlands High School
- 3rd place: Rancho Cucamonga High School
The back-to-back champion team, Chaffey High School of Chaffey Joint Union High School District, will send its top nine scoring decathletes and coach to represent San Bernardino County at the California Academic Decathlon State Competition in Santa Clara from March 25-26. At large teams may also represent the county at the state competition.
In addition to coming in first place, Chaffey High School also won awards for the following team events:
- Art
- Economics
- Literature
- Music
- Science
- Social Science
- Speech
- Super Quiz
The award for the highest-scoring student from the Chaffey High School team went to junior classman, Dylan Ventura. Ventura earned 8,088 points out of a possible 10,000.
This year, nearly 300 students from 18 high schools throughout San Bernardino County participated in the competition.
For the first time in nearly 40 years, the San Bernardino County Academic Decathlon Competition was held as a hybrid event with portions of the competition being held virtually, while others were held in person.
This comes after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the competition to transition into a completely virtual format in 2021 and 2022.
The theme for this year’s competition was “The American Revolution and the New Nation.”
Each year, the theme is generated by the United States Academic Decathlon and is provided to SBCSS by the California Academic Decathlon.
The event competition took place over three days in December, January and February consisting of categories in essay writing, both prepared and impromptu speeches, panel interviews, objective testing, and culminated with the highly anticipated Super Quiz.
For more news and information, visit the SBCSS Newsroom and follow @SBCountySchools on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. #transforminglives.