Peninsula High Students to Compete at State Academic Decathlon

Students on Palos Verdes Peninsula High's academic decathlon team will soon head to a competition to test their school smarts against others in the state.

The team placed sixth in the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon, held in January. Top teams will now advance to the state competition March 15-18 in Sacramento.

More than 500 students from 45 schools took part in the decathlon. County officials announced which teams would advance to the state competition last week. 

Peninsula senior David Wang was the top individual scorer overall and tallied 8,357 points out of a possible 10,000 during the January event.

West High School won the county competition with 45,132 points out of a possible 60,000. Redondo Union High School placed second with 42,317 points, while Beverly Hills finished third with 41,684. Arcadia High School placed fourth with 39,408 points, and Burbank High School was fifth with 39,347. All four will advance to the state competition as wild card entrants, along with Peninsula, Pico Rivera El Rancho, Torrance South and Torrance high schools.

This will be the first time in nearly 10 years Peninsula's team has earned a spot at the state competition, Principal Mitzi Cress said in a statement.

Peninsula's 2011-12 team includes Jessie Chen, Moonui Choi, Isobel Farias, Simon Fung, Christine Jung, Brian Kim, Amie Kim, Christine Rowghani, Rachel Tosney and David Wang. They are coached by Peninsula English teacher Alicia Foulk.

—City News Service contributed to this report.