Acknowledgements

Chaffey Black 2015-2016 in Sacramento

Congratulations to Coach Steven Mercado and the 2015-2016 Chaffey High School Academic Decathlon Team as they advanced to the California Academic Decathlon following their first place in the San Bernardino County Academic Decathlon for the seventh time in the past eight years.

In addition to my teaching assignment, I assist head coach Mr. Steven Mercado and assistant coaches Patty Gulino and Erin Banis as they prepared Chaffey High School's Academic Decathlon Team for the 2016 California State Championship held at Sacramento in March. My principal areas of involvement (depending upon the current year's curricular details) are mathematics, science, speech, and interview.

This year's San Bernardino County competition took place at Redlands East Valley High School in Redlands. The speech and interview portions of the competition occurred on Saturday, January 3, 2015 while the objective portions including the Super Quiz relay followed on Saturday, February 6. Individual, event, and team winners were announced at the county banquet held at the National Orange Show event center in San Bernardino on February 11.

In the 2016 San Bernardino County Academic Decathlon, Chaffey earned a first place finish for the fifth year in a row and the seventh time in eight years. This means that Chaffey has finished either first or second each of the past twelve years. Mr. Mercado published this summary of the 2016 County competition results. This year's team went on to compete against nearly seventy teams from around the state at the State Championship meet held in Sacramento from March 18-20, 2016. Chaffey finished 13th after a tentth place finish last year. Accompanying Chaffey to Sacramento this year were San Bernardino County's number two and three finishers, Redlands High School and Rancho Cucamonga High School.

This year's state champion again was Granada Hills Charter High School. Franklin High School finished second while my alma mater, South Pasadena High School finished fifth despite being without their top player.

The United States Academic Decathlon has announced that World War II will be the theme for the 2016-2017 competition season.