By Summer Crawford

News Editor

@summercrawfordd

Setting foot into the home of the Lewisville High School Fighting Farmers, the Coppell High School Academic Decathlon team competed at the annual regional competition on Jan. 30-31. Taking the prize of first place, the team tallied 47,800 points, an all-time record for CHS.

CHS went head-to-head with about 30 schools from around the area. Some of the schools were classified as large with roughly 3,000 students, like CHS, while other schools were smaller with 2,000 students. Defeating the previous Irving Nimitz High School champions was a seemingly impossible feat, until Coppell’s team of nine entered the doors.

“It was nervousness and anxiety because I knew that we had the team that should win it, but we have never won regionals and the team that we would have to beat is the 20 time reigning champion and they never lose,” CHS AP world history teacher and Academic Decathalon sponsor Tim Dixon said. “So I can’t even mentally think how they would be a loser and we are a winner even though I know that we have the team to do it. There are 10 events and the first set of scores roll in and its like, ‘OK we are looking good,’ and the second set rolls in and you start to see if you are separating from the other teams. By the fourth set of scores coming in, we were 1800 points ahead.”

Accomplishing their greatest victory yet did not come without a plethora of effort and time. While there are 25 students on the team, only nine get to be on the team for competitions. Outside hours of study time and a fourth period Academic Decathlon class help to prepare each student for upcoming events.

“The big picture is that we study constantly for about seven months, going all the way back to May, and some kids study a massive amount in the summer, some kids blow it off,” Dixon said. “Then when the school year starts it’s a constant scramble. It is a myriad of approaches, everyone has their own thing that makes them successful, but it does require a dedicated amount of time to study and prepare for the material. We would meet twice a week after school for about an hour and on some Saturdays for about three hours.”

Dixon noted that being proactive and delving into the material months in advance was a large part of why the team was successful. The team also had a different atmosphere this year, being comprised of students who are all so competitive that it raised the bar.

“I know these kids and this set of kids have been dedicated to this since March of last year so they had a head start,” Dixon said. “They jumped on this right away [and] they had a focus. Many of those kids almost made the competitive team, and they are so good that it forces the kids who are on the competitive team to be even better than in previous years.”

Dixon was not the only one to lead the team. CHS senior and team captain Michael Hall went into regionals knowing that he and the other eight students were strong. Hall finished regionals with the team’s first place and with the highest Scholastic score in the state.

“There’s really so much to be proud of with this team, everyone has worked so hard, and it really shows in the scores they all earned,” Hall said. “All three of our honors and varsity competitors placed in the top 5 in their divisions, and the first place honors and scholastic students were both from our team. I’ve put in a lot of work throughout the year, so I expected to do well, but when I heard that my score was the highest in the state, I really didn’t know what to say. I was so glad to know that all of my work had paid off, and it also gave me the extra motivation to keep working to stay on top until the state competition.”

CHS senior and social captain Stephanie Tomasky was not only excited to be competing for the first time, but also wound up with the highest varsity score on the CHS team.

“[It was] mostly a lot of cramming [for me], I felt like I wasn’t ready but with the results it was clear that I was,” Tomasky said. “It was my first real competition. We set a record and to come out third varsity overall in my first competition was not terrible. It is fun to learn things that I am not told to learn or forced to learn.”

The team is currently ranked third in the state of Texas, the highest they have ever been ranked. Dixon is looking to keep their place in the upcoming state competition on Feb. 27-28.

“It will be difficult to maintain third because teams likes Highland Park are right behind us,” Dixon said. “However, we are not looking back, we are looking at the [No.] 2 team and we are going to take them down. We plan on beating them and then our sights after that are set on the number one team. We do have a chance to win state.”

Although the team won first place as a whole, several of the students secured individual recognitions. Below are individual placements in the Honors, Scholastic and Varsity Divisions:

Honors Division:

1st place Daniel Koh

3rd place Zixiao Li

5th place Alisha Kalangara

Scholastic Division:

1st place Michael Hall

Varsity Division:

3rd place Stephanie Tomasky

4th place Shashwath Murthy

5th place Matthew Smith