In Sickness and in Health: An Exploration in Illness & Wellness.

That’s the theme for the 39th annual San Joaquin County Academic Decathlon.

This year’s event, sponsored by the San Joaquin County Office of Education, will be held Saturday at Lathrop High, 647 Spartan Way, inside the large gym.

The Super Quiz, which begins at 2 p.m., and the Awards Ceremony at 3:30 will be open to the public. Not so for the objective tests in art, economics, language / literature, math, music, social science and science – those are closed events.

Competition actually began last week with the interview and speech contests.

Host Lathrop High along with Manteca High and Sierra High are among the 13 schools in the county taking part in Academic Decathlon 2020.

A year ago, Manteca High’s Solman Aniss, who is currently at Stanford, delivered a rare perfect score of 1,000 in the gold-medal speech competition.

San Joaquin Delta Middle College High took first place in the Honors Division followed by Manteca High and Lathrop High.

Sierra High under the guidance of Jared Rio made its Academic Decathlon debut as a club team – the first-year team took second place in the 2019 Varsity Division (Sierra will again take part in club).

Some of the other SJC Academic Decathlon teams are: Escalon, Kimball, Lincoln, McNair, Tracy High, Merrill West, Millennium, and Mountain House.

The winning team will qualify for the State Academic Decathlon Championship in Sacramento on March 26-29, with all fees being paid via the SJCOE Educational Foundation.

It’s there that students will have a chance to win:

• $5,000 renewable tuition scholarships to the University of the Pacific.
• Cash awards provided by the SJCOE Educational Foundation.
• $1,000 award (top overall scorer) as provided by the Premiere Community Credit Union and the SJCOE Educational Foundation in honor of Walt Rathhaus.
• Medals and plaques.
• Dave Sorgent Championship Award.

For more information, log on to www.sjcoe.org.