ADec: Striving for Greatness

The UHS Academic Decathlon team has received great success and will be offering a new way to get involved with the team. Academic decathlon will be offered as a class for the 2019-2020 school year. The class will be held in the 1st semester for all grades. You may take it as an elective or opposite PE. It is not required to take the class to be a part of the Academic Decathlon team.

“Members of the Academic Decathlon team represent Urbandale High School in a variety of academic competitions throughout the year, The National Academic Decathlon curriculum is used as the basis of classroom activities. Students work in the areas of mathematics, social science, fine arts, language and literature, economics, formal speech, impromptu speech, interview, and essay. This course may be taken more than once,” states the Urbandale High School course directory.

The team attended the Academic Decathlon study day in Cedar Falls this year. They when regionals on January 25th at Drake. Alec Albrecht won bronze in four honors divisions during the regionals competition. Albrecht also earned silver in the honors music division. Lexi Carter won Bronze in the scholastic division for art. Shay Kent earned gold for the music and science alternate honors divisions including silver for social science and bronze for economics. Emma Johansen received silver for the science in the alternate honors division and Chloe McFarlane earned gold for art in the same division.

The team qualified for state this year and will attending March 1st and 2nd. State will be held at the Adel DeSoto Minburn High School. The team members will be tested and will be writing an impromptu essay. The participants will be given 50 minutes to write a 5 paragraph essay from their choice of the given prompts.

Academic Decathlon offers a new class for next year. All grades are welcome to sign up for it as an elective or opposite PE. This was a great season for Academic Decathlon. The team visited the Academic Decathlon study day in Cedar Falls. They has received great success at regionals. UHS is wishing them good luck at state.