The 2016-2017 season has officially come to a close for the Oakdale High School Academic Decathlon team, but not without a few memorable events.

Despite a loss to Hughson High School at the county level earlier this year, the team was invited to attend the California Academic Decathlon in late March. The event is hosted annually in Sacramento.

As a young team, they looked to the opportunity more for what it would bring the novice eight of the nine, as they got their feet wet in the way of academic competition. The competing team of eight novices and one veteran made the trek to the state capital accompanied by Aca Dec Coach Dee Hawksworth.

The Aca Dec competing team is comprised of: Honors - Taryn Lane, Anna Hawksworth-Lutzow and Russell Pabalan; Scholastic - Jude Markel, Rebekah DeCavit and Autumn Neal; Varsity - Olin Yost, Jayden Bowman and Cailyn Kiolbassa.

“I feel pretty good,” Hawksworth said of the team’s overall performance. “It’s (the season) a really long haul and it’s really hard to stay motivated for months and months.”

Yet the OHS team managed all the same. They ended on a bit of a ‘take that’ high note with an overall score (minus Super Quiz) of 39,105 beating current county champ Hughson’s score of 38,907.

Hawksworth admitted to feeling a true coach’s sense of joy as the team of nine overcame the team which ended the longstanding OHS county winning streak in February. According to the coach, Super Quiz scores were omitted by CAD at the conclusion of the popular public portion of the event, noting that officials had become aware of a YouTube broadcast which showed the Super Quiz from another state in its entirety.

“There was no way to tell which teams may have cheated and which ones didn’t,” she said. “So they had to throw it out. I have no doubt it would have helped our scores.”

Regardless the team fared well, bringing home more hardware. Taryn Lane brought home four gold medals for Art, Economics, Literature and Science; silver medals in Music and as a top scorer for Division III. Jude Markel earned a gold medal in Science; silver medals in Economics, Speech and as a top scorer in Division III. Autumn Neal eared silver medals in Literature and Math; bronze in Music and as top scorer in Division III.

Lane, the team veteran and graduating senior, was also named the top team scorer which rounded out her state medal total at seven.

Hawksworth noted the freshman and sophomore teammates did very well for their first state competition.