Algona High School’s Academic Decathlon team started their competition season last week. They competed at the Iowa Lakes campus in Algona on the 26th and 27th of January for their Regional qualifier.
The AHS team is made up of seven people, including Faith Huber, Averie Cunningham, Remi Shaffer, Waverly Espe, Flynn McCann, Elijah Garrett, and Nick DePue. There are three categories students are placed in: Scholastic, Honors, and Varsity. These categories are dependent on student’s grade point average, GPA. The Honors range is 4.0-3.75 GPA, the Scholastic range is 3.74-3.0 GPA, and the Varsity range is 2.99-0 GPA.
With a clue from the name Academic Decathlon, the event is made up of 10 categories in which students compete. The categories are: Art, Economics, Literature, Math, Music, Science, and Social Science. The other three events are Prepared Speech, Impromptu Speech, and an Interview. This year the theme was: The American Revolution, so most of the categories revolved around the topic or the time period.
On the night of the 26th, students took tests on art and music and did speeches and interviews. The following day, students finished the rest of the tests and received individual awards. The team scored a total of 24,750 points.
Next up, A.D. does a State essay writing on the 16th of February. Then they compete at the State competition on the 3rd and 4th of March.