Basha High Academic Decathlon

11/22/2021

Our Basha High Decathletes performed with honor at last weekend's Hamilton High Invitational, becoming the 2nd Place Team right behind the current state champions Hamilton High. Our decathletes brought home a whopping 21 individual medals and 1 OVERALL Gold medal. As icing on the cake our team placed 1st in Super Quiz, becoming the first AcDec Super Quiz Champions for the 2021-2022 season.

2nd Place Team
Super Quiz Champions

Individual medalists are:
Anokh Ambadipudi - 1st place Interview - Perfect Score 1000/1000
Neha Bhavanam - 3rd place Interview, 3rd place Social Science
Aria Hewett - 1st Scholastic OVERALL, 1st place Music, 1st place Science, 1st place Economics, 1st place Essay, 2nd place Math, 3rd place Speech
Shreya Joshi - 2nd place Social Science
Seyid Elters- 2nd place Economics
Mason Hammond - 2nd place Music, 3rd place Literature, 3rd place Mathematics
Sashank Kocherlakota - 2nd place Economics
Adrian Macias - 2nd place Essay
Aaron Redman - 2nd place Social Science
Ava Hoffman- 3rd place Art, 3rd place Speech
Stella Mekhanik 3rd place Essay

Total Possible Score = 10000
Team Top Scores: Ava Hoffman (7283.1), Abi Keyes (6893.8), Aria Hewett (6685.4)
Honor Top Scorer: Ava Hoffman (7283.1), Abi Kayes (6893.8), Riya Gaur (6233.1)
Scholastic Top Scorer: Aria Hewett (6685.4), Shreya Joshi (5638.8), Neha Bhavanam (5204.7)
Varsity Top Scorer: Mason Hammond (4988.8), Seyid Elters (4843.6), Aaron Redman (4723.8)

We are proud of all of our decathletes! If you have any of them in your classes, please be sure to congratulate them!
In addition to the medalists above, the following students participated
Sophie Walker, Ryan Materna, Jenna Materna, Jeremiah Yousif, Izabella Insalaco, Xavier Dion, Disha Sankhla, Evan Martin, Sahana Attaluri, Jacon Byars, and Sritej Bommaraju.

AS ALWAYS, WE THANK YOU, OUR BASHA HIGH TEACHERS FOR ALL THE KNOWLEDGE YOU GIVE TO OUR BASHA DECATHLETES. One thing we recognize is that without your contribution as educators, our students would not have the foundation that we build on, to experience the success that we are seeing. THANK YOU!

11/22/2021

Your 2021-2022 squad was AWESOME in their first competition of the season!
-2nd Place Team Overall!🥈
-1st Place Team in Super Quiz! 🏆

11/20/2021

Day One of the 2021 Hamilton Invitational is in the books! Congrats to our 21 competitors for a strong start to the competition, as they completed the speech and interview portions of the contest. Go Bears!

04/03/2021

On Thursday, April 1st, your 2020-2021 Basha Academic Decathlon Team was honored at a ceremony at Hamilton High School celebrating all CUSD Academic Decathlon achievements this school year. At the ceremony, your Bears were able to share with everyone....

OUR 3RD PLACE FINISH IN TEAM STATE!

See the link for the full PowerPoint presentation from the event, and look in the comments for pictures of our team members.

03/14/2021

Your 2020-2021 Basha AcDec team capped an impressive season with an unprecedented achievement: 4th place in the Arizona State Tournament! Your Bears reached another all-time high as a program, coming off a 6th place in 2020. Special congratulations to our 4 seniors: Justin Schaade, Justin Lazare, our team captain Brielle Edwards, and the 2nd highest scoring competitor in all of Arizona, Jake Summers!

02/11/2021

PROUD doesn’t begin to express how we feel about our 2020-2021 Basha AcDec Team. They are AMAZING! 😊🐻

02/07/2021

We are SO PROUD of our 2020-2021 Academic Decathlon team!! Your Bears took the Region IV competition this weekend by storm, with the highest scoring team performance in the history of our program. Now, on to the STATE TOURNAMENT!

12/30/2020

Hello Basha AcDec Family!

It’s been a loooong time since we last posted here, and a lot has happened over that time, so to sum up:

*Our AcDec program is alive and well!
*All competitions this school year are being held virtually.
*WE NEED YOU! Specifically, we need high school graduates to serve as speech and interview judges for our completion coming up on January 8th. If you can spend the evening with us, judging from the comfort of your home, please go to this link:

https://forms.gle/XjCoQWuHYdRm61xz6

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. Go Bears!

January 8, 2021

03/17/2020

First, a HUGE THANK YOU to the many parents, community members, students and BHS teachers and staff who jumped in last minute to make the subjective portion of the state Competition happen! We (the students and coaches) cannot thank you all enough for the generosity of your time, especially on the first weekend of spring break. It was ironic that infectious disease was a big part of our curriculum this year and that an actual infectious disease almost put the kibosh on our state goals. But thanks to so many of you, it didn't. We could not have done it without your help!

Our Decathletes finished with a BHS record of 6th Place in State and 38,042.6 points, an improvement over last year's best ever 8th place and the previous year's 11th place finishes. Hamilton High placed 1st and Casteel High placed 9th, making CUSD well represented in Arizona Academic Decathlon's top 10 (regrettably Chandler, Perry and AZP did not have teams qualify to participate in state this year). Those rankings for Hamilton HS (1st) and Casteel HS( 9th) are the same rankings they earned last year. So our Bears are the ones making the move and improving! Every year a little closer to State Champions!

Congratulations go out to our individual medalists! Keep in mind that each division has 120 competitors, each having earned their way to the state competition. Only the top 40 teams in the state are invited to compete.

Honors Division (3.75-4.0 unweighted GPA)
Jake Summers (11) Team MVP, Essay Silver Medal, Mathematics Bronze Medal, Social Studies 4th, Music 10th [9/10 scores in top 20]
Brielle Edwards (11) Essay Gold Medal, Art 8th, Social Studies 8th [9/10 scores in top 20]
Teresa Tran (12) Science 8th, Mathematics 9th [8/10 scores in top 20]

Scholastic Division (3.0-3.75 unweighted GPA)
Caitlin Ruhland (11) Essay Gold Medal, Economics 6th, Science 7th, Lang/Lit 10th [9/10 scores in top 20]
Winter Ashley (11) Speech Gold Medal, Science 9th, Mathematics 10th [9/10 scores in top 20]
Anokh Ambadipudi (10) Interview Bronze Medal, Speech 7th [7/10 scores in top 20]

Varsity Division (2.99 ↓ unweighted GPA)
Justin Schade (11) Mathematics 5th, Science 7th, Music 7th, Lang/Lit 8th, Essay 8th [8/10 scores in top 20]
McKenzie Nelson (12) [7/10 scores in top 20]

You are all helping to build excellence here at Basha High, which contributes directly to our team's success. I cannot tell you how often I hear our students crediting you, their teachers, for the knowledge and critical thinking skills they use to win at our competitions and even hear them crediting you with teaching them the answers to specific questions out of the 3389 questions they collectively encounter each competition. As we prepare for next year's cold war/space race-astronomy/differential calculus AcDec curriculum, please keep an eye out for any potential future AcDec Bears. We are always looking for students for all 3 divisions (especially varsity) and would love it if you could send some future champion bears our way!

03/06/2020

Our 2020 AcDec Team was recognized at the Spring Sports Assembly this morning! ❤️🐻

03/05/2020

Many of you are aware that our Basha High School Academic Decathlon Team has worked really hard to qualify to compete in the State Competition this weekend at Hamilton High School. We are SUDDENLY in urgent need of judges as one of our corporate sponsors who agreed to provide judges and proctors has pulled out just today. For our team this could be extremely disadvantageous. We are ranked 1st in Region for Interview and 3rd for Speech, so if we lose the ability to compete in these 2/10 events, our relative scores are hit harder than other schools who may actually benefit from cancelling these events.

We are now 40 judges and 12 proctors short. If any of you can help and volunteer to judge either speech or interview Friday or proctor tests on Saturday (when we know you should be relaxing after a long and arduous quarter), we would be extremely grateful. Please consider helping this once as it is truly an urgent and last minute situation. Hamilton is not far for us and dinner will be provided. Bring a friend/significant other and make a Friday night of it!

Here is a link to volunteer.

https://forms.gle/Tg7YY7FjEnH9U27NA

2:30-8:30 pm Speech Interview
6:30 -12:00 Test Proctor
1:00 - 3:00 Super Quiz

Sign up for what you can. I have been told that if you can do some, the organizers will be flexible and work around your schedules.

Thank you in Advance to any who can help!

02/17/2020

Belated congratulations to our Regionals Team for qualifying for the State Tournament! This is the 7th time in the past 8 years that Basha AcDec has earned the right to compete with Arizona’s best.
Congrats to our medalists and top finishers:
●Brielle Edwards- 2nd Place Interview, 4th Social Studies, Top Team Scorer
●Jake Summers - 4th Math, 2nd Highest team scorer
●Caitlin Ruhland - 3rd Place Interview
●Winter Ashley - 4th Interview, 5th Speech
●Anokh Ambadipudi - 3rd Place Speech, 5th Science, 5th Math
●Justin Schade - 3rd Music
●McKenzie Nelson - 3rd Interview, 5th Speech
●Teresa Tran - 3rd Highest Team Scorer

State will take place on March 6th and 7th at Hamilton High School. Go Bears!