By Brittany Hanson/Garden Grove Journal
They’re going the distance. Or at least, they went there and already came back with medals in their hands. They’re winning.
They are the La Quinta High School Academic Decathlon team and what they won was a lot of gold and the number 36 spot out of 65 in the entire state.
Seven members of the team were presented before the board at the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday night.
Kimberly Vu, Hung Nguyen, Dan Phan, Bao Minh Hoang, Johnson Pham, Alison Le and Jennifer Vu were presented as a part of an academic power force that is the La Quinta team.
Not present at the meeting were Cindy Tran and Wendy Fung.
Denise Halstead, La Quinta principal, said, “They’ve had a lot of accomplishments this year. They competed in the county [decathlon] in February and there they were in Division 2. They came in first in Division 2 and their scores beat most of teams in Division 1.”
The team came in third in the county and because of that qualified for the state competition in Sacramento.
“It is by the way, the first time a Garden Grove team has gone to state and a first in history of the state that a Division 2 team has gone to state,” said Holstead, “They truly are record breakers.”
Two notable scores are a perfect 1000 for Tan in Scholastics in Science and a 933 out of 1000 for Vu in Speech.
Decathlon competition is themed each year and the theme for this year was “Imperialism.”
Students study in extra coursework that covers math, science, language, writing, arts, music and speech as well as interview in order to compete.
