On March 14, at Chicago State University, Libertyville High School’s Academic Decathlon team took fourth place in state out of 52 teams present at the tournament.
In the Academic Decathlon, students participate in 10 different divisions, which consist of Art, Music, Economics, Interview, Essay, Language & Literature, Speech, Super Quiz, Math, and Science. Students also compete in different divisions based on their GPAs.
Juniors Thomas Garcia, Katherine Liu, Madison Hedlund, and Jared Huch along with seniors Sean Bruno, Arooj Ahmad, Becca Lothspeich, Erika Cooney and Megan Yeung were all members competing with the team.
The team had many individual wins within the tournament: Ahmad won second place in the interview category; Bruno won third place in economics; Huch won first in interview and second in speech; and Lothspeich got third place in interview.
Whitney Young, a selective, private school in Chicago, took first place at the competition. LHS has an ongoing history of placing within the top 10 at state going back to 2000, but this year tied their second-best finish ever.
“We are just a once-per-week practice team and we were going up against teams from Chicago who have Acadec as a class. So, yeah, we were extremely happy,” Cooney expressed in a press release.
