The Arcadia High School Constitution Team were named national champions late Monday night!
The team arrived home Tuesday night to an exhuberant welcoming committee at 11:30 p.m. in the high school parking lot (story continues below the following 80-second video highlight of the celebration).
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Get the Flash Player to see this content. . AHS’s Marilyn Daleo says celebratory banners will be flying on the campus and the team’s theme song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” will be playing instead of bells for the next two days. There will be a lunch rally in their honor this Friday, April 30.
(Click the following links to read about this weekend’s national championships in D.C of the AHS Science Bowl team and last weekend’s top-ten finish in Florida by the Ocean Sciences team.)
This report was filed late Monday, April 26, by Barb and Gary Kovacic in Washington, D.C., with the Team:
After a tension-filled afternoon in the Dirksen Senate Office Building hearing room, where all six units from the AHS Constitution Team were grilled by panels of judges, a year of preparation and hard work finally paid off at the “We the People” Awards Dinner at the historic Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. After a long night of speeches and presentations, the winners were announced in excruciating reverse order: 10 – Wisconsin 9 – Missouri 8 – Indiana 7 – Florida 6 – New Jersey 5 – Colorado 4 – Oregon 3 – Virginia 2 – Alabama 1 and National Champions – California
As soon as the second place team was named, the Arcadia High School team knew that it had won a national title that had eluded the school since 1993. With cheers and tears, the team took the stage with teacher Kevin Fox to receive medals and a plaque commemorating their victory, as parents, coaches, school administrators, and even competing schools cheered the accomplishment.
From Sunday, April 25:
The Arcadia High School Constitution team made the top 10 finalists in the nation today (Sunday, April 25) and will compete for the top prize starting at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) Monday in the final round of the 23rd annual contest, “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, being held in Washington, D.C.
The finalists were announced tonight at a celebration at Pentagon City. Arcadia, representing the entire state of California, will compete Monday at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Results will be announced Monday night. The other nine states represented were Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Left-to-right: Coaches Jim Romo and Gary Kovacic, along with Casey Kovacic, and AHS Constitution Team teacher Kevin Fox.
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AHS has nearly become its own voting district in our nation’s capital this week with 30 members of the AHS team as teacher Kevin Fox, principal David Vannasdall, Arcadia Unified School District superintendent Dr. Joel Shawn, volunteer coaches Jim Romo, Bob Garrett, Gary Kovacic, Karyn McCreary, and several parents all their to support the team since Wednesday, with some sightseeing squeezed in on Thursday and Friday.
And the Constitution Team isn’t the only team in our nation’s capital representing Arcadia High School this week. The AHS Science Bowl Team will be at the National 4-H Center just outside of Washington, D.C. in Chevy Chase, Md., to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Science Bowl Competition this Friday, April 29 – May 4.
Kovacic filed the following report on the Constitution Team to ArcadiasBest.com (along with the photos from Gary and wife Barb Kovacic): .
The team and their entourage toured the U.S. Supreme Court building and chambers Thursday morning and had a private audience with one of Justice Kennedy’s clerks who provided a unique perspective of the Court and the process involved in accepting cases for oral argument and the drafting of majority and dissenting opinions.
“We also met with Congressman David Dreier (Arcadia’s representative) who was very kind with his time and remarks. He squeezed us all in his Rules Committee office in the Capitol building, which made for a very intimate and meaningful meeting.
“As a student of history and politics, the Congressman was able to discuss in some detail the various views of the Founders and some of the Constitutional issues that the Team will be discussing in the upcoming National Finals.”
Kovacic said the team also toured the Capitol and sat in on a speech at the House of Representatives.
Friday the team was to tour various monuments on the Mall and Arlington Cemetery where it will lay a wreath at the Iwo Jima Marine Memorial.
But it’s not all tourism. “Of course, the Team continues to prepare for the Finals at every spare moment,” Kovacic noted.
The first two rounds of the competition were held Saturday and Sunday.
— By Scott Hettrick