Sparta High School's Academic Decathlon has been training hard for their upcoming regional competition at UW-Stevens Point. The regionals will take place on Friday, January 8th. "The students will be preparing for a planned speech and impromptu speech, interview and the multiple choice questions," Lori Hagen, Sparta's Academic Decathlon team advisor, said. "Students are tested in ten categories: Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Science, and Speech." According to United States Academic Decathlon website (USAD.org)
Sparta High School's team members are Kristin Barclay, Elliot Quast, Kaitlyn Quade, Davis Pratt, CJ Anderson, Sarah Rodgers, Skye Wikkerink, Alexa Thesing, Brittany Anderson, and Katelynn Bollig. Hagen said, "We meet twice a week at 6:30 am to prepare for the competition, which means we practice interviews and speech, create questions for one another, review online and read together."
The Academic Decathlon is competition that is based out of High Schools in the United States, and school teams compete against each other.Sparta's team has 12 students, three of which are Honor students who need a GPA of 4.00 to 3.750. Then there are three Scholastic with the GPA falling around 3.00 to 3.749, and then there are the three varsity students who have a GPA between 0.00 to 2.9999. The other three students are alternates. CJ Anderson, a varsity student in the Decathlon, said, "The Academic Decathlon is a group that reads and studies a topic, learns about it, and has competitions against the topic." Each year they learn a new topic to compete on, this year is the French Revolution. The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens was also read and studied upon for the competitions.
Academic Decathlon is not just to increase your knowledge on certain subjects but to carry on your learned information and new people skills when in college and getting a job. "The mission of the United States Academic Decathlon is to promote learning and academic excellence among students of varying achievement levels by developing and providing multidisciplinary academic competitions using USAD-based curricula." stated USAD.org. The Academic Decathlon at Sparta High School has done many things for the students in the group. Stated Anderson, "It is a very good program, and it looks great on college applications."
