The fifth annual Academic Decathlon ended with the Accounting Club walking away with first place and $200.
The decathlon was held in the Teleconference Center, and is the first event of three, all part of Cerritos College’s annual Falcon Games.
Although the Accounting Club came away with the top prize, Phi Theta Kappa finished second and was awarded $150, coming in third was the Robotics Club who would earn $100 and finally Model United Nations who would be assigned $50 after answering the wildcard question.
Rodrigo Quintas, member of the Accounting Club, said he wasn’t sure what the club was going to do with the money just yet and would have to bring it up at the next meeting.
The decathlon had 15 clubs from Cerritos College participate in a three round tournament that included topics ranging from biology to sports to decide its winner.
In the first round the topics included music, history and chemistry and eliminated more than half of the teams leaving only six.
All club members sat in the audience, and would send one representative to the stage for each category, the chosen representative would sit facing away from his teammates.
After the question was asked the clubs chosen members would write their answer on a whiteboard and hold it behind their head so the four judges could walk by and mark their answers.
Each category had two or three questions before the category would change and the clubs had the opportunity to switch their members.
After the first round, 11 clubs were eliminated leaving only Robotics, CCM, PTK, MUN, Commercial Music and Accounting.
The clubs then went through the same process but this time the categories grouped into two.
The categories included sports and biology, math and automotive, and entertainment and english.
After the second round the finalist were announced, but before the final round, all clubs that had been eliminated throughout the decathlon had the opportunity to compete for the wildcard prize.
One member from each club that had been eliminated made his way to the stage and was asked one question, and the person that answered correctly the fastest would win the wildcard round for his or her club.
MUN answered the question regarding Harry Potter and was awarded the $50 prize.
After the wildcard round the three remaining teams sent all their members to the stage to participate in the final categories.
The teams were asked questions from five separate categories including political science, current events, physics, geography and greek mythology.
The final question was a riddle, and the scoring for the riddle was based on accuracy and speed.
After the final question the judges gathered to tally their final scores before announcing the accounting club as the winner.
Quintas said, “We had fun, I know we had fun.”
President of the iFalcon club Kadie Gurley said, “I thought [the decathlon] went really well, I was really surprised that all the seats were packed and a lot of clubs were interested, it was cool to see the clubs interact with one another.”
Originally called the Interclub Council Tournament, the Falcon Games is a three day event with a different event on each day, Tuesday, March 7 will host the physical portion of the games and the final day, Wednesday, March 8 will host the video game tournament.
This is the fifth annual Falcon Games that are held every Spring here at Cerritos College.
Student activities coordinator, Amna Jara, has been part of the Games since the beginning saying, “It is really near and dear to my heart.
“It’s just to have fun and network and get to know each other,” she added.
Gurley expects that the coming days will be equally as competitive as the first, saying, “I expect more competitiveness than what we saw today, [it] should be a really fun event.”
