Mary Whitfill
Features Editor
The Coppell High School Academic Decathlon team (AcDec) has soared through this year’s regional competition to the state tournament in El Paso this month. As one of the highest achieving teams to exist at CHS in recent years, the team represents the brilliance and commitment of Coppell students.
“It has been such an honor to make it this far,” co-captain junior Jahnavi Udaikumar said. “We have worked so hard to achieve this and everyone deserves it.”
The AcDec team is currently ranked 10th in state and 23rd in the nation.
“We have the ability and talent to compete at the national level,” AcDec coach Tim Dixon said. “The only problem we have is that CHS kids are so involved in other activities and travel internationally. We have a lot of team members leave during the summer and holiday break.”
Despite the varying interests and commitments of the team members, their dedication to the team was proven during the five-day snow break, preventing them from attending school and practicing traditionally.
“We studied everyday over the snow break,” Dixon said. “The team is connected to web based software that allows us to compete on inter-squad scrimmages and national scrimmages. The snow days gave us a chance to finally push out all distractions and really focus on some of the support material we have.”
The team is divided into three groups of competitors; A, B and C average students. These students compete at competition against other students, who have similar grade averages, but they are tested on the same topics as students of other averages. Each year, the AcDec team is faced with a specific topic that they are forced to study in an in-depth manor, in addition to the general content. This year, the topic is ‘Great Depression.’
“The topic of the year is always our biggest challenge,” Udaikumar said. “Most of us have seen the general info in years past, but the new content is what we have to work on the most.”
The 2010-11 AcDec team will be the first to compete at a state level since the 2006 team who placed third in the competition.
“We have had good team commitment,” Dixon said. “I still think asking kids to come in everyday after school to study for two hours after they just spent eight hours in school sounds crazy. They also come in every other Saturday for six hours. It has been a challenge to get the team to realize their potential – I feel they are the most talented in the state.”
