Kamehameha team second at national academic decathlon

For the second year in a row, Kamehameha Schools-Hawaii placed second in its division at the United States Academic Decathlon competition April 16-18 in Garden Grove, Calif., defeating teams from across the nation, China and London.

The seven-member Kameha-meha team was coming off a fourth consecutive state title and a second-place finish at last year’s national competition.

The academic decathlon is a 10-event scholastic competition which includes art, economics, essay, interview, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, speech and social science categories.

This year’s theme was “New Alternatives in Energy: Ingenuity and Innovation.”

Teams competed in three different divisions based upon the size of their school, and students are arranged into three sub-divisions (honors, scholastic and varsity) based upon individual student GPAs.

The Kamehameha team consisted of seniors Ciarra-Lynn Parinas and Sage Constantinou; juniors Raiden Domingo, Tom Ikeda and Caleb Leslie; and freshmen Jacob Perry and Kepola Ishikawa. High school math kumu Dane Nelson serves as the coach.

This year’s team built off of last year’s success, by earning second place in the competition’s Super Quiz Relay and having at least one student earn a medal in every academic category.

With a score of 7,345.7, Constantinou was the highest-scoring team member. Competing in the scholastic division, he won a gold medal in science, two silvers in art and speech and two bronze medals in economics and social science.

Parinas was selected by her teammates as the most valuable team member for demonstrating leadership, team spirit, positive attitude, and academic achievement. She also scored an honors division gold medal in the interview category.

Constantinou and Perry also were awarded overall individual honors in their respective divisions, which earned them each a $500 scholarship.