Published On: March 3rd, 2016By Leticia Fehling

MacArthur High School’s Academic Decathlon Team Has Nice Showing at Regional Competition

The Generals showed off their “brainy” prowess at the scholastic competition.

[dropcap color=”#888″ type=”square”]T[/dropcap]he Academic Decathlon team from [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]MacArthur High School finished fourth at the regional event. The Generals brought home a total of 16 medals at the competition held at Bryan High School.

The U.S. Academic Decathlon® is a 10-event scholastic competition. High school students match their intellects with students from other schools. They each compete in art, economics, essay, interview, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, social science and speech.

Teams of nine high school students battle in the 10 different events. The events are based on college-level, academically rigorous curriculum linked by a common theme. The USAD designed the competition to challenge students. Students who take part develop, connect and communicate ideas under pressure.

Students from different academic backgrounds comprise the Academic Decathlon teams. A typical team has three “A” students, three “B” students and three “C” students.

Every year, the USAD® selects a curricular topic. The 2015-16 theme is “India.”

At the regional competition, decathlete Andrés Reyna shined. In the Honors division, he took first place in the art and math categories. Andrés was the second highest scoring student in the region.

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The MacArthur Decathletes look sharp and smart.

The [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]Generals have been busy since regionals. They are preparing for the online competition. That will give the students one more shot at making it to nationals. This is how MacArthur student [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]Isidro Jasso made it to nationals in 2015. This year, the national competition will take place April 28-30 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Mónica Luna, Juan Herrera, Gerardo Arredondo, Mark Borjas, Rachel Ortega, Deise Ferrera, Cecilia Gutiérrez, Lizbeth Rangel, Andrés Reyna, Isidro Jasso, Carlos Canizales, Taylor Garrett, Gabrielle Chambers, Cristal Romero, Jesús Llanas and Carlos Hernández comprise the MacArthur team.

Teachers Melissa Solano and James Fons coach the decathletes.