CHICAGO — When ponytail-sporting, self-professed academic slouch Micah Roth was approached by his history teacher about joining the Academic Decathlon squad at El Camino Real High School -- the reigning national champions -- he was dumbfounded.
"Have you seen my grades?" Roth, 17, recalls saying, referring to his C grade-point average.
The teacher had indeed seen Roth's marks, and they were precisely why coaches at the Woodland Hills school wanted him. Three of the nine members of their vaunted academic team -- and of every other high school Academic Decathlon team -- are required to have cumulative grade-point averages south of B (3.0).
Decathlon competitions may be the only place in academia where average students are so celebrated and coveted.
Each year, Academic Decathlon coaches across the country scour test results and grill teachers to hunt down those whip-smart kids who, for whatever reason, don't perform well in the classroom. Typically, they don't like school, balk at homework and, when it comes down to it, would rather play video games.
The three C students who accept the challenge at each school are known as varsity members.
They are kids like Kenton Whipple, a sophomore at perennial Maine state winner Scarborough High School, who jokingly diagnosed his academic challenge: "I'm really smart but I have no work ethic."
Convincing these kids to add several hours a week of study isn't an easy sell. At El Camino, which this year captured its seventh California state championship, making the team means staying after school until 10 p.m. each weeknight. It also consigns team members to "the Penthouse," a room the school has devoted to the team, for eight hours each of the four Saturdays before the city event and many more weekends if they make it to state and national finals events.
Varsity members have been playing a crucial part in crowning a national champion, which will be announced tonight. California state champion El Camino Real is competing for its second straight U.S. title, which would be its fourth national title.
El Camino's varsity members and their six teammates -- three A students, known as the honors members, and three B students, known as scholastics, have been hunkered down since Tuesday afternoon at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. They've been drilling one another in the histories of Sparta and Rome and cramming in last-minute calculus and trigonometry sessions with the math teacher they've brought along for tutoring.
