West High School in Torrance was named Thursday the winner of the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon, advancing to the state competition next month.
West High scored 54,459 out of a possible 60,000 points to top the list of competitors. Seven other teams in the competition scored high enough to earn wild-card berths in the state contest, which will be held March 22-24 in Sacramento.
In addition to West High, the Los Angeles County teams advancing to the state contest, along with their scores, are:
— Mark Keppel (Alhambra), 52,823;
— Beverly Hills, 52,373;
— Edgewood (West Covina), 45,657;
— Rosemead, 44,559;
— El Rancho (Pico Rivera), 43,948;
— Redondo Union, 43,929; and
— Palos Verdes Peninsula, 43,123.
Nearly 400 students from 50 teams participated in the county decathlon, which focused on “The 1960s: A Transformational Decade.”
The top individual scorer was West High’s Kendall Kirio, who scored 9,259 out of a possible 10,000 points.
The winner of the state competition will advance to the U.S. Academic Decathlon taking place in Bloomington, Minnesota, in April.
The winner of the Los Angeles Unified School District Academic Decathlon, which is held separately from the county, is expected to be announced Saturday. LAUSD schools have won the national championship the last eight years in a row — six times by Granada Hills Charter High School and twice by El Camino Real Charter High School, which won last year and in 2014.
Those two schools, however, did not compete in the LAUSD Academic Decathlon this year. According to the district, the schools opted to compete in the Southern California Private Schools event due to uncertainty stemming from the January LAUSD teachers’ strike.
Granada Hills Charter High School has won the national competition six of the last seven years, interrupted only in 2014, when another LAUSD school, El Camino Real, won the title.