Penns Valley senior crowned PA Academic Decathlon state champion
Penns Valley senior Jack O’Donald was crowned state champion at last weekend’s academic decathlon state finals in Souderton.
O’Donald finished with 8,396 out of 10,000 possible points and medaled in eight out of ten events. The team finished in third place in the small school division at the competition.
Other members of the Penns Valley team, Rayanne Witmer, Emma Lake, Jules Black, Zoe Riggleman, Sam Ewaskiewicz, and Max Morrison, also medaled at the state finals.
Academic decathlon consists of 335 multiple choice questions, two speeches, an interview and an essay. Ten subjects are covered: art, economics, essay, interview, literature, math, music, science, social science and speech. This year’s theme was water.
Academic decathlon students are split into three categories based on grades — honors, scholastic and varsity. O’Donald has been part of the team for three years and competes at the honors level, which is the highest.
Students practice and study for months both individually and as a team to prepare for the tournament.
“I just devoted a lot of my free time to it. Rather than sitting around or going to pick up games for soccer or playing video games. I was just sitting at home reading the material and taking practice tests. I’ve always been a very good test taker,” O’Donald said.
Penns Valley competes in the small school group, competing against schools like Carlisle, Montoursville, South Williamsport, Philipsburg-Osceola and Bellefonte.
O’Donald beat out students from all school groups and all three categories to win, finishing with 300 more points than the runner-up. For the state champion to come from a smaller school is quite the feat, coach Sarah Farrant said.
“It’s rare for the state champion not to come from the state winning team, which this year was Seneca Valley,” Farrant said.
The Penns Valley team did not qualify for nationals this year, so despite O’Donald being the state champion, he will not advance. The Montoursville team will go on to compete in the small school division at nationals in April.
O’Donald competed at nationals last year when the competition was still online due to COVID but was grateful to be able to compete in person this year at the state level.
“There was a sense of catharsis about the whole state competition,” O’Donald said. “Not only in terms of the result that I was able to get, but also I was thankful to be there after kind of being deprived of a proper state competition for the first two years.”
For O’Donald, academic decathlon is the perfect intersection of individual competition and a team sport.
“You can help each other learn things, and for me, it was very fun not only to achieve what I could individually and push myself as far as I could, but also to help my teammates do the same thing and just push the entire mentality team as high as we could go,” O’Donald said.
Farrant has coached academic decathlon at Penns Valley since 2012 and has seen how the competitions can help prepare students for college.
“I think Academic Decathlon in high school teaches kids to be self-motivated and to figure out what their best learning style is to process large amounts of information,” Farrant said.