By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Once again, the Benicia High School Academic Decathlon team has proven it’s among the best in the region.

The team took third place overall and several students nabbed individual medals in the North Bay Regional competition last weekend at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield.

It was another strong finish for the Panther AcaDeca team, which studied for about six months on the topic of Imperialism. “That covered almost 1,000 years of history,” instructor Teresa Finn said.

“It was really hard compared to years previous,” said First Team leader Augustus “Gus” Costa, a senior and four-year veteran of the class who won three individual medals. “Before it was things like the Great Depression or the French Revolution, where it was really specific. For the first time we had to study thousands of years and hundreds of places.”

The decathlon for which the students prepare has 10 events. Six are related to the topic, covering history, literature, art, economy, science and music. But the decathletes also must be well versed in math, show interview skills, give speeches and write essays.

“It’s supposed to test the whole kid,” Finn said. “It’s a very comprehensive, very demanding thing, and very exciting competition.”

The competition is held over two weekends — the first for the subjective theme, the second for testing. Benicia’s First Team — Academic Decathlon includes students in three different GPA brackets — took third place in the region to go with 10 medals in various subjects. They won two golds.

One of the more difficult parts of the competition was the Super Quiz, said junior Rachael Roberts. “Because the subject is so much broader than it’s been before, there was more information to take in,” she said. But it wasn’t just the Benicia team that felt the pressure. “Other teams that usually beat us out, there was a time when they would not get any questions right.”

“Everyone was struggling during Super Quiz,” agreed Allegra Buch, a senior in her second year of AcaDeca.

For Nathan Mamere, a senior and three-year veteran, the math was a big challenge — especially calculus. “Not all of us are in a calculus class, so you have to learn calculus for this class,” he said.

Gus’ biggest challenge was music. “This year it seems like they focused not so much on the history of the piece or the composer, but on musical theory. So it was things like beats, meter, rhyme — and that stuff, it’s like math,” he said. “We had a maestro come in and teach it, but I never really grasped it.”

Once again, Academic Decathlon students came away feeling the class helped them in their other studies — and that it will help them in college, too.

“The class makes you want to work for it,” Allegra said.

“This class gives you a step up on the other classes because you’re learning difficult material,” Nathan said. “Years before, I’m learning about economics, which is a class I have to take in my senior year. Now that I’m in economics, I’m excelling in a way that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t taken AcaDeca years previous.”

“I have friends that took this class for four years, and now they’re freshmen in college,” Gus said. “They said that AcaDeca basically makes college a breeze.”

It’s essential to have a teacher who’s excited about the competition and the learning that goes with it, the students said. “The teacher definitely plays a gigantic part in our learning,” Nathan said.

“You need a teacher who is interested in not just one subject like history or math, but is interested in everything, and Ms. Finn is definitely one of those teachers,” agreed Gus.

Superintendent of Benicia Schools Janice Adams concurred, saying she’s “proud of our students and how well they did in coming third. … Ms. Finn is doing a great job with them. It’s wonderful to see how many medals our kids got.”