More than 250 students from all over the country participated in the 2023 USAD National Academic Pentathlon at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove, where local students and teams earned a total of 29 medals.
The eighth-grade team from Fairmont Private Schools’ Historic Anaheim Campus took second place at the national championship held last weekend, with the curriculum theme “The American Revolution and the New Nation.”
Eighth-grade students Alexis Kang, Zane Shaiyen, Madeline Kim, Amiya Sidhu, Hosan Kim, Ethan Zhang, Sadie Kim, Orion Campbell and Montserrat Caceres were led by Fairmont Private Schools’ Head Coach Beverly Debreczeni.
Following the day-long competition on May 20, teams were notified if they won additional awards in the Overall and Super Quiz categories during a ceremony emceed by Kristin Rigby, who serves as the Orange County Department of Education’s coordinator of academic events and recognition programs.
Seventh- and eighth-grade students who entered the competition individually were also able to earn medals in each category, including top overall student. Four students from Walton Intermediate School in the Garden Grove Unified School District brought home a total of 13 medals.
Two seventh-grade students from Oakridge Private School in Orange also participated in the national competition.
The United States Academic Pentathlon is a five-event scholastic competition for middle school students, providing the benefits of Academic Decathlon along with the challenges of rigorous team and individual competition.
The program strives to foster a greater respect for knowledge, promote healthy inter-school academic competition and further develop student communication skills.
The competition’s areas of concentration are language and literature, fine arts, science, mathematics and social science. Academic pentathlon teams consist of students in three different grade-point average categories: Honor (those with GPAs of 3.75 or above), Scholastic (GPAs of 3.00 to 3.74) and Varsity (GPAs of 2.99 or below). These categories ensure all students have an opportunity to compete.
The theme for the 2023-24 United States Pentathlon curriculum is “Technology and Humanity.” The national competition will be held in Phoenix, Arizona.
You can find the full list of team and individual honors at https://usad.org/Pentathlon/Pentathlon-Results.aspx.
For more information on how to start an academic decathlon or pentathlon program at your school, contact Kristin Rigby, OCDE coordinator of academic events and recognition programs, at 714-966-4435 or KRigby@ocde.us.