This is Your Story

Today I finished the cover letter for the new DemiDec mailing. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to write until I realized that I was thinking too much about DemiDec and not about the subscribers themselves. So I decided on a theme that felt more right to me--more in keeping with what DemiDec really means to all of us who work on it.

"This is your story."

* * *

Dear Coaches and Teams,

There are so many compelling stories in the Academic Decathlon. Among them this last year…

• Mark Keppel High School, which in its rookie season scored over 40,000 points in Los Angeles County and took fifth overall in the competition (and first in the junior division.)
• Immaculate Heart, which achieved the Arizona IA state title in its first try with a total enrollment of only 58 students.
• Granada Hills Charter, which came in third in California with over 48,000 points and was recognized as the most improved team between the regional and state levels.
• West Valley, which pulled an upset at the Alaska state competition, coming from behind to win on the strength of its performance in subjectives and the Super Quiz.
• Keller, which won the Texas state title for the first time and whose three Honor students took turns as the top scoring Decathlete at the regional, state and nation levels.
• Park City in Utah, which took tenth at nationals and gladdened our hearts by petitioning to change its school mascot to the alpaca.
• El Camino Real, which won its first back-to-back national titles, and Mountain View, which both times made it impossible to call till the very end.
• King-Drew, a Title I school which turned heads by winning its conference in the L.A. Unified School District competition—and also took home the most-improved team award.
• Friendswood, which under new coaches repeated as Texas medium school state champions, defying the conventional wisdom that new coaches need time to “learn the ropes.”
• Hilo, which saw its team split in half after a new school opened and took Hilo’s coach and several Decathletes with it, leading to the most tightly-fought Hawaiian state meet in years.
• West, which didn’t win the California state competition, but whose top Decathlete said afterward that he’d rather have lost with this team, than won with any other.

We count it a privilege to have worked with all these schools and with five hundred others around the country, in states big and small—with teams that meet as a class, others that meet as a club—with coaches who are new, and others who have been involved since long before I competed with my own team in 1994.

But we also know that the stories in Decathlon aren’t about DemiDec, or about any other source of materials: they’re about you.

We’re not the official curriculum. You don’t need us to succeed.

But we would be honored to be part of your story.