The Academic Decathlon team at Oak Park High School participated in the county competition on Saturday, Jan. 27 and Saturday, Feb 3 at Pacifica High School, receiving a total of 51 individual medals.

The A team placed 2nd in Speech and Interview, while the B Team placed third in Speech and first out of the 10 teams in the Blue Conference. Students are split into two teams; the A team is considered competitive, whereas the B team is the alternate. The teams placed 5th and 6th overall.

Students were selected for the Academic Decathlon team at the end of the 2016-2017 school year in order to get a head start on preparation during the summer. According to Academic Decathlon faculty advisor Robin Midiri, students were selected based off GPA and interviews. Rather than accepting only those with a perfect 4.0 GPA, the team is required to have three students with an A average, 3 students with a B average and 3 students with a C average.

“When you talk about Aca Deca, you have Speech, Interview and Essay, so it was really important for us to have students who started out by interviewing well,” Midiri said. “To me, that’s my favorite part of the entire program — the way students practice their speeches and their interview skills.”

According to junior and co-captain Claire Epstein, who won individual medals in Art and Economics, this year’s theme was Africa — meaning that the art, literature and music sections of the competition were all focused on African culture.

“I never ever knew how interested I could be in, for example, the nuances of African drumming groups or the history of different African societies,” Epstein wrote.

This year, students began preparing for competition during the summer of 2017. This preparation included reading the selected novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe — a story about life in Nigeria in pre and post-colonial times.

“I didn’t like [Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe] at first since it seemed mundane and boring,” freshman Sanjana Sharma, who won a medal in music, wrote. “But as you get into it, it gives you an amazing insight into the life of the African clans, specifically speaking, the Igbo of southern Nigeria.”

During first semester, Academic Decathlon practice is a typical classroom setting including quizzes and tests, impromptu speeches and discussions of assigned reading. OPHS teachers and various guest speakers lecture on the various subject areas included in the competition.

“Some of my favorite classes have been when we had guest speakers to teach subjects like Economics and Social Science,” Epstein wrote.

After first semester, students are split into the A team and B team based on their scores in the December scrimmage.

“Your A team goes into what’s called the Red Conference — the most competitive division,” Midiri said. “The B team goes into what’s called the Blue Conference — the next level [down] as far as competitive. There’s one more conference, the White Conference, and that’s for schools that are smaller. We don’t qualify for that.”

The Academic Decathlon competition takes place over two weekends in the end of January and beginning of February. The Speech, Interview and Essay sections of the competition took place on Jan. 27. The written subject tests, which assess the students’ knowledge of the other topics — Math, Literature, Science, Social Science, Economics, Music and Art — took place on Feb. 3. The competition concluded with the Super Quiz — the game-show-like final round of the competition — in which only the A team participated.

“To me, when you have such a great program, it’s not about the medals that you get,” Midiri said. “It’s bringing these students through this program and watching them develop and learn. To me, the more students I bring through, the happier I’m going to be.”