Tops Again!

Photo: SIERRA STAR/LACEY REES
Beaming from all the medals they received at the Madera County Academic Decathlon last weekend are members of Yosemite High's team: FRONT - K.C. Schreiber, Caitlin Hansard, Saranya Srinivasan, Jennifer Rust and Melissa Stanley. BACK - Coach Dave Carpenter, Bryce Bullock, Kevin Flournoy and Andrew Wells.

MADERA — They did it again! For the eighth year in a row, Yosemite High School’s Academic Decathlon team has won the Madera County Aca­demic Decathlon competition. With a total score of 36,350 points, Yosemite beat Madera and Chowchilla high schools who had 27,679 and 25,526 points respectively. A total of 60,000 points were possible. Yosemite will now represent Madera County at the statewide competition on March 16 to 18 in Los Angeles. The Yosemite team earned 11 gold medals, eight silver and 11 bronze. Each gold medal was also accompanied by $100. SEVEN OF THE GOLD MEDALS were won by Virginia Corless, YHS senior, who also achieved the highest number of points across the 10 events and received the Outstanding Scholar award worth a $200 scholarship. Each team is made up of nine students: three “A” students, three “B” students, and three “C” students. Those participating were Ke­vin Flournoy, Caitlin Hansard, Melissa Stanley, Jennifer Rust, K.C. Schreiber, Andrew Wells, Bryce Bullock, Virginia Corless, and Saranya Srinivasan. Coach was YHS teacher, Dave Car­penter. Yosemite also won the Super Quiz, the subject material being “Concepts of the Self: Phil­oso­phy, Psychology and Religion.” The Super Quiz, unlike the other events, was held before an audience. The questions were shown on a large screen so the audience, for fun, could attempt to answer the questions on individual ans­wer sheets. Yosemite received a score of 54 on the Super Quiz, leaving Chowchilla and Madera trailing with scores of 30 and 38 respectively. Jennifer Rust of Yosemite and Rita Alves of Chowchilla were invited to read their gold-medal-winning essays to the audience, and Virginia Corless was asked to share her winning speech with those attending. Jennifer’s essay dealt with understanding the relationship of the self to society using examples from the novel, “Frank­en­stein.” Virginia’s speech dealt with what she learned through the stage. She talked of the search for beauty through the works of Shakespeare, specifically from “A Winter’s Tale.” The events and the medals won by Yosemite students in each event are as follows: Speech — Virginia Corless, gold; Caitlin Hansard, bronze. Essay — Jennifer Rust, gold (tie with Madera); Saranya Srinivasan, silver; Virginia Cor­­less, K.C. Schreiber, bronze (three-way tie with Madera). Interview — Jennifer Rust, gold; Saranya Srinivasan, silver. Super Quiz — K.C. Schreiber, Jennifer Rust, Virginia Corless, gold; Saranya Srinivasan, bronze (four way tie with Chowchilla and Madera). Music — Virginia Corless, gold; Jennifer Rust, Saranya Srinivasan, silver; Bryce Bullock, K.C. Schreiber, bronze (three-way tie with Chowchilla). Language and literature — Virginia Corless, silver; Jennifer Rust, Saranya Srinivasan, bronze. Mathematics — Virginia Cor­less, gold; Kevin Flournoy, silver (tie with Madera); K.C. Schreiber, bronze. Economics — Virginia Cor­less, gold; Jennifer Rust, silver. Social science — Virginia Cor­less, gold; Jennifer Rust, bronze. Art — Virginia Corless, gold; Kevin Flournoy, silver; Saranya Srinivasan, bronze. Jennifer Rust, who also competed last year, felt that the music was more difficult this year because it came from so many different cultures. Also the math was hard because it is used as a tiebreaker. “They make it as hard as possible,” she says. The team went to Boston last summer to see the pieces of art used in the competition. The trip helped K.C. Schreiber, a senior at Yosemite. “One of the questions dealt with the color in the painting, and because we saw it, it made it easier to realize which was the answer,” she says. She enjoyed the music the most. “I like music,” she says. “It was interesting to study the music of different cultures.” Saranya Srinivasan is a junior who competed last year and “will definitely be doing [the competition] next year.” The first year “ignorance is bliss,” she says. “The second year you know how hard you have to work to achieve your goal.” She thought that music was the hardest to study. “You have never heard of the instruments and you don’t even know the music is around.” She did enjoy studying the religions for the Super Quiz because she is Hindu and that was one of the religions they had to study. This is the first year to compete for Kevin Fournoy, a senior. “It is quite intimidating,” he admitted before the Super Quiz. He has been studying music for eight years and plays the French horn and trumpet in the Yosemite band. “I thought I had a firm grasp on [music],” he says, but was surprised at how much history he had to learn. He did enjoy studying the Super Quiz subjects. Andrew Wells, competing for his second year, thinks the Super Quiz is difficult because “everyone sees how well you do,” he says. “Last year I didn’t know how hard [the whole competition] was going to be.” He studied more this year.

All these books went into the learning process:

Congratulations!

Preparations for defending the title:

ACADEMIC DECATHLON TEAM DEFENDS TITLE