Super success for Casa Ac-Dec: No. 7 in state, No. 10 in US

The Casa Grande High School academic decathlon team finishes seventh in state championships, and ranks 10th nationally.|

The Casa Grande High School Academic Decathlon team had a spectacular performance at the California State Championships held last Friday and Saturday in Sacramento, finishing seventh out of 68 top teams in the state and 10th highest scoring team in the country.

Going into the competition, Casa Grande had the 11th highest team score in the state at the county level, and set a team goal to reach the top 10 in California.

Casa Grande was the only team in the top 10 north of the Los Angeles area. The top three teams in the state were Granada Hills Charter, El Camino Real Charter and Franklin High. All are from Los Angeles. Granada Hills had the highest team score in the nation. It has been the national champion for the past three years.

All teams must be composed of three students with GPAs in each of the categories: Honors (A range), Scholastic (B range) and Varsity (C range).

Casa’s nine members were Nico Carballal, Salem Ali, Jessica Tang, Omar Khan, Nicholas Eaton, Harrison Bosque, David Wheaton, Kylie Houck and Amber Zeng.

The Casa Grande team score of more than 48,329 points was the highest total score in the 10 events (Art, Economics, World War II History, Mathematics, Nuclear Physics, Literature, Speech, Interview, Music and Essay) that it has ever earned.

Individual awards were awarded to the top exams out of 204 competitors in each division.

For Casa Grande:

Jessica Tang took Silver in Interview and sixth in Physics.

Amber Zeng won a Bronze in Interview.

David Wheatman won a Silver in Physics and was fourth in World War II History.

Omar Khan took Gold in Essay and in Math (perfect test) and a Bronze in Interview and was fourth in Physics.

Nico Carballal came in fourth in Physics and sixth in Art and Math.

Salem Ali was fourth in Physics and seventh in Economics.

Harrison Bosque had a fifth in speech and a sixth in Physics.

Kylie Houck had a fifth in Art.

Nicholas Eaton was sixth in Economics and Physics.

Khan had the highest individual total score of any Casa student in the past 33 years, with an incredible average of 90 percent on each of the 10 events.

Casa coach Rick Pillsbury said the team especially wanted to thank teacher Sarah Obbagy for her expert help on literature, speech and essay writing.

“The Academic Decathlon team would also like to thank everyone who donated money to the team for supplies,” Pillsbury said. “We still need $1,200 for books and testing materials for next year’s program, which will have the theme of studying Africa.”

People wishing to help should make checks out to Casa Grande Academic Decathlon, in care of Rick Pillsbury.

“I personally would like to thank the Petaluma community that has supported our program for 33 years,” the coach said. “I will be retiring, and it has been an honor working with Petaluma’s wonderful young scholars who are an inspiration to us all.”

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