This past weekend, on March 8-9, students from across Pennsylvania competed in the 40th annual Pennsylvania Academic Decathlon, held at Carlisle High School.  Souderton Area High School students finished second in the state over 13 other district champions and wild card teams, and they now advance to the United States Academic Decathlon Online National Finals held in late April.

Students competed in ten events – essay, speech, interview, math, music, literature, science, social science, art, and economics, in nine-member teams composed of three honors or “A” students, three scholastic or “B” students, and three varsity or “C” students, forcing teams to work together across different ability levels to learn the same content.

The subjects this year were centered on a theme – Technology and Humanity. Senior Aaron Jones and junior Ahsan Rahman made the PA All-State Team in the Scholastic and Honors
division respectively.

Souderton scored 40,874 out of 60,000 possible points, finishing 2nd to state champion Seneca Valley High School which scored 42,290 points. Souderton has been competing in the Academic Decathlon since 2013 and has won 6 regional titles and 3 state titles in that time.

The members who competed at the state tournament are seniors Alex Espenship, Isaac Brown, Aaron Jones, Lucas McDonough, Will Canavan, and Sam Cottom, and juniors Ahsan Rahman, Giovanni Iervolino, and Aaron Im.

The team is coached by STEM teacher Phil Cerami, mathematics teacher Carolyn Scott, and French teacher Sally Cushmore.