Academic Team Tackles 1st County Test
The Campolindo Academic Decathlon Team
January 27, 2017
The 1st of the 2 portions of the Academic Decathlon county competition took place on January 21 at CSU East Bay. The Campolindo team faced off against Acalanes in a speech competition comprised of 3 categories: prepared speech, impromptu, and interview.
The 2nd portion of the county competition, to be held February 8, will consist of 7 scantron tests and a jeopardy-like super quiz. The winner of these events will go on to the state competition.
Club members have been writing and rehearsing their prepared speeches since the beginning of the school year. At the competition, volunteer judges scored the speeches on a scale of 0-1000.
After the prepared speech, competitors received 3 impromptu speech topic choices. They were given just one minute to choose their topic and prepare a 1:30-2 minute speech.
Sophomore contestant William McKinney said, “The impromptu was the hardest part without a doubt. With the prepared speech you know what was coming, but here, you had to think on your feet and also adapt to the judges’ personalities. The most difficult part was filling up the 2 minutes though, because you only had a minute to prepare and you basically had to improvise, which led to a lot of rambling.”
After delivering the impromptu speech, the contestant was then sent to a different room with another panel of 3 volunteer judges for a scored interview. Questions included, “What do you consider to be the most important characteristic of a person?” and “What is true success in your opinion?” as well as more casual questions like “What do you do in your spare time?” and “What are some of your hobbies?”
Senior captain Zoe Portnoff said, “The interview competition is one of my favorite parts about aca-deca. Even though you are being judged, there is still a relaxed environment that makes interview an enjoyable experience. The judges, too, were extremely nice and we are very thankful for them volunteering their time.”
Robert Carter, one of the volunteers, was pleased with what he saw from the students. “If I didn’t enjoy judging, I wouldn’t have volunteered. Its just great seeing all these highly-motivated and scholarly kids who really care about learning and maybe want to make a difference in the world. We never had anything like this when I was a kid, but I would have surely done it as it seems highly rewarding and sets you up for your future,” he said.
According to Academic Decathlon coach Paul Verbanszky, the team did well. “We seemed very prepared. I heard most of the speeches and they were very good,” he said.
Citing the hard work club members will be putting in, Verbanszky expects his squad to be prepared for the next part of county competition.
Portnoff said, “Hopefully our team will keep up our streak of going to states. I’ve done it for my last 3 years here, and hopefully, we could go to nationals if we try hard enough. But that will be tough. Meanwhile, we will be practicing.”
