Taft Takes 2nd Place in Big Test : Education: The Woodland Hills team lands behind Texas school in Academic Decathlon Super Quiz. Overall winners will be announced today.

TEMPE, Ariz. — In a close race among tournament favorites, Taft High School of Woodland Hills came in second place Saturday in the U.S. Academic Decathlon Super Quiz, landing just behind powerhouse Texas in the pressure-packed “College Bowl”-style event of the national competition.

The Taft team, representing California, scored 27 points out of a possible 30, narrowly edged out by the Texas crew, which racked up 28 in its bid to capture the Lone Star State’s fourth straight U.S. decathlon title.

In a tie for third place in the Super Quiz were squads from Arizona and New Jersey, which tallied 26 points apiece and are also favored to be among the top finishers of the overall contest.

“It’s just too hard to tell,” Taft team member David Bronstein, 17, said of the decathlon’s final outcome, which will be announced at an awards ceremony today. “Sure, we didn’t win the Super Quiz, but the whole thing isn’t over yet.”

Although the winner of the Super Quiz has often gone on to sweep the title in the past, last year’s Super Quiz champ, Taft’s cross-town rival, El Camino Real High School, ultimately placed fourth. But Taft coach Michael Wilson paid homage Saturday to the strength of the team from Texas--the only state besides California ever to win the national decathlon in the competition’s 12-year history.

“If Texas’ Super Quiz score is any indication of their team, they’re incredibly strong,” Wilson said.

The Taft team is hoping to take back the U.S. crown won by the school in 1989. Saturday’s Super Quiz, a high-stakes event that followed a day of tests in six academic disciplines, capped several months of exhaustive preparation that often eclipsed the students’ social lives as well as their work in other classes.

In a packed auditorium on the Arizona State University campus here, the nine Taft seniors--pitted against students from 43 other states and the District of Columbia--fielded questions based on the lives of 30 world figures, from architects to ballet dancers.

As the Taft contestants took their seats onstage one after the other, all of them garbed in gray jackets, white shirts and black pants, more than 50 noisy relatives and school officials cheered them on, including a grandmother who had flown out to Arizona from England.

“I can’t stand it,” attorney Paul Bronstein said as he waited to catch a glimpse of his son before the event began. “David’s just been working night and day, killing himself.”

The teen-ager’s diligence paid off: David--the last Taft student in the hot seat--was one of four students on the squad to nail a perfect score of 5.

Another was Mara Weiss, the team’s only girl, who looked out through tear-filled eyes after her performance, clutching her stomach with one hand and using the other to tightly hold onto a “worry rock” the youths passed to each teammate as he or she took to the stage.

For Weiss, 17, the score represented something of a breakthrough. At both the city and state tournaments, she fell just shy of perfect tallies after changing correct answers to wrong ones. During the quiz, contestants have a mere seven seconds to respond to each query.

“I’ve come so close each time,” Weiss said after Saturday’s contest, almost overcome with emotion. This time, she said, she refused to waver from her first intuitive responses to the questions, although on three of them she was unsure.

The team score of 27 represented an adjusted tally out of the 45 questions asked. Only six of the students’ scores ultimately counted--the top two of each of three categories of competitors, who are evenly divided among the categories according to their grade-point averages.

The second-place Super Quiz finish was a new experience for the Taft team, which had never come in lower than first in any of its previous competitions, whether in Super Quiz or the overall decathlon.

“It’s a different feeling, but I’m not disappointed. We did our best,” team captain Chris Hoag, 18, said.

“No matter what happens, we’re done” with studying and competing, he said, cracking a grin as he added, “That’s cause for celebration in itself.”

But the tension and pressure will certainly come flooding back at today’s awards banquet, coupled with a dose of newfound religious fervor, predicted teammate Leonard An, 17.

“There are no atheists in the academic decathlon,” he said.

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