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Grades 9-10:USAD Championship

February 20, 2019

From February 15th to 18th, 38 SHSID students participated in the United States Academic Decathlon, or USAD, in Chengdu, China. Out of more than 2300 decathletes and more than 260 teams, SHSID students went above and beyond to place all 4 SHSID teams into the Top 10, with one bringing home the championship title.

The United States Academic Decathlon is a prestigious academic competition focused on developing the leaders of tomorrow. Decathletes must excel in all ten categories–essay, art, literature, music, math, science, social science, interview, speech, and economics–to achieve high scores. Moreover, USAD stresses the importance of teamwork. Out of a team of 9, there must be 3 team members who have a GPA lower than 3.75 (the scholastic division), and 3 team members with a GPA lower than 3.0 (the varsity division). This means that high GPA students, even when working hard, may not win the competition if lower GPA students are ignored. Through this competition, decathletes can learn the values of teamwork, determination, leadership, and time management.

SHSID has always been a continuous powerhouse in the Academic Decathlon, and this year was no different. Excluding the awards from Super Quiz, SHSID decathletes managed to carry home 26 bronze, 17 silver, and 16 gold medals. The most notable individual decathletes are bronze-medal winning varsity Brandon Wu, scholastic Yuki (Jojo) Amemiya, and honor Jiaxin (Wendy) Tan, followed by silver medal winning scholastic Tianyu (Andrew) Pei and honors Kaiqing (Kate) Liang. Finally, Zhining (Jenny) Zheng won the gold overall for the scholastic division and Aaron Zhang won the gold overall for the honors division.

Not only did the individuals perform well, but the teams representing SHSID also showed impressive results. In the Super Quiz section, SHSID teams 188 and 189 won 1st and 3rd place. Overall, all 4 SHSID teams broke into the top 10. Team 190 won 9th, team 191 won 4th, team 189 won 2nd and team 188 won 1st.

Congratulations to all the decathletes！

(Written by 10(7) Aaron Zhang Pictures by He Yiwei, Chen Lin, and ASDAN)