Stockdale High School received the Claude W. Richardson perpetual trophy as the overall team winner of the 46th Annual Kern County Academic Decathlon which concluded today at Stockdale High School. 130 students from 16 high schools participated. Stockdale will represent Kern County in the California Academic Decathlon scheduled for next month.
Rounding out the top five teams were:
Second place – Arvin High School
Third place – Frontier High School
Fourth place – West High School
Fifth place – Highland High School
Academic Decathlon is made up of ten events including Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Science, and Speech, plus a Super Quiz. The majority of the subjects were contested on February 4, 2026. Each school’s team consisted of a maximum of nine students: three “A” (honor), three “B” (scholastic) and three “C” (varsity) entrants. They competed against other students in the same category. Individual medals are awarded to first, second and third place finishers in each category and event.
The event concluded today, featuring the final two in-person categories — the speech competition and the Super Quiz.
The Super Quiz is a pressure-packed 90-minutes of excitement, run like a TV quiz show. Team members have ten seconds to collaborate and answer each question. Running totals are displayed on large, visible flip cards, bringing about enthusiastic reactions from the audience. The first place winner of the Super Quiz also took home the Milo Hall Trophy, which was awarded this year to Liberty High School.
Overall individual top scores in this year’s Academic Decathlon went to:
Honors Division
1st place – Samuel Ding
2nd place – Samantha Truong
3rd place – Alice Guo
Scholastic Division
1st place – Nataly Hernandez
2nd place – Seraphina Fordham
3rd place – Adam Monte De Ramos
Varsity Division
1st place – Macala Magugat
2nd place – Brooklyn Weston
3rd place – Paloma Garcia
By Erin Pruitt
Erin Pruitt joined the Kern County Superintendent of Schools as a Communications Specialist in 2025. Before this role, Pruitt served as an Assistant Producer for KETN's Do the Math program since 2017, where she first discovered her passion for storytelling and community engagement in the field of communications.