The California Academic Decathlon Directors are a Mess
Why did me and my team—who scored in the top ten overall—just leave state being forced to take a virtual spot for nationals when last year we didn’t even make top ten and got to attend in person nationals??
Well the directors of CAD thought it was a great idea to not only spring their obviously selfish and half baked plan on the decathletes but also their parents AND coaches.
We were given the normal talk about how four teams can go to nationals, and that two teams of one division can be sent to nationals. If the teams #1, #2, #3, and #4 are in the same division, only one and two can go while the other two positions would go to the next small and medium school in line.
This may seem undeserved for the small and medium school, but if you know CAD, it’s quite literally IMPOSSIBLE for a small or even medium school to compete with a larger school.
We as a state AND a country have had the same two schools winning nationals for more than TEN YEARS. And these teams originate from California.
So in order to give a small school of 600 or less/ a medium school a chance, the last two spots for in person nationals was almost always reserved for them.
But right after awards was announced and everyone believed it was the same rules as last year, they announced they were making a FOURTH DIVISION FOR EXTRA LARGE SCHOOLS.
If you don’t understand, these “extra large schools” are just large schools moved to a different division so all four large schools go to nationals and small/medium schools are left with virtual.
Not only is this depriving students from smaller schools to meeting new people and environments but is actively pushing out the other small schools who could’ve participated in the virtual competition.
My schools rivals for a long time now can’t compete in nationals at all because of this rule. Mind you, they might not have a team next year.
Their team has been participating in the virtual competition for FOREVER, always choosing virtual over in person. This shows that people actually want to participate in virtual, or in general.
It’s already extremely hard for ANY team to get the chance to go to nationals with such big schools competing, and my team worked EXTREMELY hard. It was 10x harder already with AI grading our essays, but now we have to compete with teams who score over 46,000 on average??? How are we supposed to compete with 53,000, 49,990, 48,000, and 46,000???? Almost all of smalls schools funding comes from the coaches directly and the parents as well.
The directors like to pretend like they don’t have a choice or that we knew beforehand but we don’t and they do. They’re too lazy to do their job and not competent enough to understand the effects they have on schools.
Even if they revoke this “extra large school” title, they now have to let down two large schools by sending one to virtual and one home.
It’s so frustrating because if they keep this rule, not only will it keep my team out, but EVERY. SINGLE. SMALL AND MEDIUM SCHOOL OUT.
The Directors are most likely listening to the complaints of other states because they never get national titles. But the hard truth is, if you don’t study hard enough, you really don’t deserve that title. My team dropped thousands of points last year at nationals and we STILL won our division. By listening to the complaints of other states, the directors are actively shutting down students who work HARD for their chance to go to nationals.
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