Beverly Hills Students Win Big At Multiple Competitions

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Beverly Hills students of all ages took home trophies and medals from competitions in February.

Winners included, artists, scientists and academic decathlon participants from Beverly Hills High School, Beverly Vista Middle School and Hawthorne Elementary School.

Academic Decathlon

Beverly Hills High School's official Academic Decathlon team competed against 59 local teams at a Los Angeles County Office of Education regional competition in late February. After a successful competition full of gold and silver medals, the team qualified to move forward to a statewide competition for the third year in a row.

This regional competition "tested their knowledge covering economics, math, science, art, music, literature, and social studies focusing on this year's theme American Revolution," according to Ann-Marie Fine, BHHS Social Studies Teacher and Academic Decathlon Coach. Students participated in impromptu speeches and interviews and wrote essays.

The squad took home gold awards in the interview, speech, economics and mathematics categories. Two students, Avery Lo and Elisha Rhie, had perfect scores in the speech competition and Sarah Zhang had a perfect score in the interview competition.

The official team will compete on March 11 with objectives and essay testing on campus, and then in Santa Clara on March 24-26 for speech and interview competition.

The school's junior team also took home a number of gold, silver and bronze recognitions in the speech and interview categories. They will compete on march 11 at a heptathlon at BHHS.

Los Angeles Area Art Show & Competition

Hawthorne students made a massive sweep at a California Art Education Association Los Angeles area art show and competition, moving them forward to the association's Southern California area show.

"Hawthorne Elementary School did extremely well taking home a total of six place-awards. All of these pieces will be moving on to the next level of competition in the coming weeks," said Hawthorne Art Teacher Elizabeth Federman.

Hawthorne took home the first, second and third place awards for the TK-2 division in two-dimensional drawings.

Science Olympiad Competition

Beverly Vista Middle School took second place overall at a regional science olympiad competition at Antelope Valley College, moving them forward to a statewide pool. The students participated in 23 academic and building tests in earth sciences, biology, chemistry, physics and engineering.

Taking second overall, the competitors took home a massive trophy and a number of individual medals, including first place in disease detectives and biology process lab, second place for rocks and minerals, sixth place for a bridge building event and more.

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