L.A. decathlon winner named

Benjamin Franklin High School has won the 2018-19 Academic Decathlon for the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials announced Saturday.

“Today you shined the brightest with your skill, hard work and determination,” the district tweeted in its announcement.

The academic tournament took place last weekend, but the awards ceremony was held Saturday afternoon at Hollywood High School, where the winner was announced.

Nine-student teams from each of 55 participating schools competed in speech, interview and essay contests, while also demonstrating their knowledge in the arts, economics, language and literature, mathematics, music and social science. The scores of all sessions are tallied together to name an overall winner.

Other school districts participate in a separate competition managed by the L.A. County Office of Education. The 2019 county winner, announced last week, is West High School in Torrance. It, too, will move on to the state competition March 22-24 in Sacramento. The state champion will then advance to the national competition April 25-27 in Bloomington, Minn.

Schools from L.A. Unified have won 18 national titles since 1987.