The Academic Decathlon is beginning its third year!  The purpose of this club is to prepare and send a team of 12 students to compete in the regional, state and hopefully national competitions of the United States Academic Decathlon.  The Academic Decathlon is now considered a zero hour course for which students will receive academic credit if the participate for the entire season.  The season runs during the 1st and 2nd trimesters.  The head coach is Dr. M. Quigley and the assistant coach is Mary Lambert.  The role of the coaches is to help the team prepare for the competition.  The team also enlists help from other JMPS staff members and some very valuable help from parent volunteers including Mr. and Mrs. Hammel.  The practice schedule has initially been set for Friday mornings from 6:50 to 7:50 in the High School Science Lab room.  Later in the season we will be moving to twice a week including occasional Saturday seminars.  The team members consist of 3 “A” students, 3 “B” students and 3 “C” students as well as one alternate for each of the three grade groups.  The 2009-2010 competition theme is the French Revolution with Chemistry as the science topic.  The students compete as individuals, winning individual gold, silver and bronze medals and their scores count toward an overall team score.  Winning teams move on to State and National competitions.  Each student will compete in the following 10 academic events: art, economics, essay, interview, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, social science and speech.  The final event of the day is the Super Quiz in which the entire team competes in a game-show type setting in front of an audience of family and friends. 

More information is available at the United States Academic Decathlon web site. http://usad.org/About/Overview.asp 

The region 1 competition will be held in Show Low Arizona on February 5th and 6th, 2009.  We are looking forward to a great year building on the individual and team successes over the last two years.   Keep an eye on announcements regarding upcoming events and meetings.