The Amador Valley High School civics team won second place this week in the prestigious “We the People…” national civics competition Monday, finishing just behind New Brunswick (N.J.) High School and ahead of high school teams from the other 50 states and the District of Columbia. East High School from Denver won the third place award.
The awards were announced at a dinner held in the Omni Shores Hotel after three days of intensive questioning by judges, including several state Supreme Court judges. All schools competed before different panels of judges last Saturday and Sunday, with the 10 finalists, including Amador, facing the judges again on Monday.
Others in the top 10 were Lamar Academy, McAllen, Texas; Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, Miami; Vestavia Hills High School, Birmingham, Ala.; Grant High School, Portland; Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies, Richmond, Va.; Half Hollow Hills High School East, Dix Hills, N.Y., and Essex High School, Essex Junction, Vt.
“I am absolutely ecstatic,” said Brian Ladd, the 16-year career social studies teacher at Amador who has taught the competition civics class. “Our team was praised by the judges for their quick, ‘on their feet’ responses, even though everyone was sitting down. Unlike in previous competitions, this year’s was more in the rapid-fire style of Appellate Court oral arguments, with question after question. It was a pretty intense 11 minutes of presentation for each of our six teams.”
“We finished, we had strong compliments from several of the top state judges,” Ladd added. “They told our group, ‘You are as good as some of the lawyers we have coming before us.’ That made all of us extremely proud.”
The jubilation was short-lived, however. The students boarded a plane to return home on Tuesday, where they faced Advanced Placement tests Wednesday and Thursday. They also will have to make up the tests they missed on Tuesday.
The Amador Valley competition civics team included Angela Aronoff, Kiel Barry, Sean Basalyga, Nihat Bayramoglu, Sanam Bhatia, Audra Bloom, David Crisostomo, Jennifer Doxey, Jasmine Guo, Scott Hanford, Jennifer Hank, Glenalyn Hunt, Lauren Johnson, Jack LaFrancesca, Jessica Ma, Amy Qin, Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, Paula Reever, David Rowse, Lakshmi Santhosh, Eugene Shenkar, Tiffany Shih, Suzanna Sund, Will Tagg, Sonia Talati, Susan Tang, Brookanne Thompson, Ronald Tran, Elise Viebeck, and Jenny Zhan.
This was the seventh time the Amador Valley team has represented the state of California. The team now has had four top finishes, including a national championship in 1995.
