For the fifth consecutive year, Kamehameha School-Hawaii won the Hawaii Academic Decathlon championship recently at University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Teams from throughout the state competed in 10 academic events — individually and as a team — for medals and the opportunity to represent Hawaii at the national competition April 28-30 in Anchorage, Alaska.
The academic competition for high school students involves objective tests in literature, science, social science, music, art, mathematics and economics. The subjective events are essay, speech and interview.
Each high school enters a team of nine students: three “A” or Honor students (3.75-4.00 GPA), three “B” or Scholastic students (3.00-3.749), and three “C or below” Varsity students (0.00-2.999). Using this format, students compete with others of their own ability level as individuals. In addition, member’s scores are added together for a team score.
The team’s overall score in the state competition, 43,239 out of 60,000 possible points, was the highest it achieved to date.
This year’s team members are Raiden Domingo, Anuhea Lee, Lopaka O’Connor, Tom Ikeda, Jordyn Moniz, Kawika O’Connor, Kepola Ishikawa and Jacob Perry. Lopaka O’Connor was the highest-scoring student in the state for the third consecutive year. The team is led by head coach Dane Nelson.
Honokaa High School placed second overall, with team member Skyla Elder receiving the gold medal in speech. Coach Vince Keelan praised his team’s continuing improvement.
Kamehameha-Hawaii also won this year’s SuperQuiz, a quiz show-type event that combines questions from six of the objective areas. India was the theme of the SuperQuiz, hosted by Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth. KS-Hawaii correctly answered 29 of 36 questions. Honokaa finished in a tie for second with Kamehameha-Maui.
The team from KS-Hawaii in Keaau has been competing in HIAD since 2005, when Nelson joined the teaching staff and brought his interest in academic decathlon with him from his time at Hilo High School.
This is KS-Hawaii’s seventh state championship overall. KSH placed second in the national competition in its division last year in Garden Grove, Calif., and second in 2014 when the event was in Honolulu.
