Academic Decathletes Earn Another Trip to State
The brainiacs on the Highland Park High School Academic Decathlon team have done it again. The Scots finished second only to defending state champion Rockwall in the Region X tournament, which was held last weekend at Conrad High School. Highland Park and Rockwall compete in the medium school division, but the Scots’ score was much higher than the 40,209 recorded by Plano High School, which won the large school division.
The Scots earned a score of 43,602 at the Region X tournament. That’s 889 points more than the Highland Park record established at last year’s state tournament. The Scots are ranked third among the 25 medium schools that will compete for the state championship Feb. 24-26 in San Antonio.
Highlights at the regional meet include Bo Schuh’s win in the varsity division and Thomas Mylott’s second-place finish in the scholastic division. While Bo, Thomas, Brooks Alexander, Arya McCarthy, and Jaclyn Zhou all won separate events, contributions were also made by Jean Luc Vorster, Will Nichol, Karis Dodd, Nathan Hardenburg, Ellie Reynolds, and Meg Brawner.
Thanks for this post, Dan. Coaches Pollock, Bergeron, and Milner have done a great job. Principal Kelly and Superintendent Orr attended the regional awards ceremony, which was really nice of them.
Congratulations!
Some of these kids would identify more with the punk band Brainiac than exceptionally smart brainiacs!
This is a terrific thing about AcDec: kids compete in divisions based on their grades (not all courses and unweighted, so not same as GPA). They like to learn about and do a bunch of different things (actually ten things, since it is a decathlon). Some make straight A’s, many do not, but all are students in the best sense of the word.
HPHS has other competitive academic teams–debate, science, social studies, etc. They are not as well known as the athletic teams, but they exist and do well.