The Academic Decathlon is beginning its second 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.  One exciting change for this year is that the Academic Decathlon is now considered a zero hour course for which students can 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.  The role of the head coach is to help the team prepare along with 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 Wednesday and Friday mornings from 6:50 to 7:50 in the High School Science Lab room.  Later in the season we will be moving to three or four times per week including an occasional Saturday seminar.  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 2008-2009 competition theme is Latin America with a special focus on Mexico and Evolutionary Biology is the science topic for the Super Quiz.  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 January 30th and 31st 2009.  We are looking forward to a great second year building of the success of the first in which we won the Rookie of the Year trophy as a team.  This trophy is given out to the top scoring new team.   Keep an eye on announcements regarding upcoming events and meetings.