Two Fresno County charter schools were top 10 finishers in Division 1 in the California Academic Decathlon competition held in Santa Clara on Thursday through Sunday.

University High School of Fresno Unified and Hallmark Academy of Sanger Unified finished eighth and ninth, and both are going on to compete in the U.S. Academic Decathlon on April 25-27.

Hallmark Academy’s team will travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to represent California in the at-large schools division.

University High, which will compete online, will defend the small schools national championship that it has claimed every year since 2007 except for 2017, when it did not qualify, and 2020 when the competition was canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

University High placed third in the Super Quiz event in the California Academic Decathlon, only three points behind the state decathlon champion, El Camino Real Charter. A University High team member, Madeline Hu, had a perfect score of 1,000 in the art competition.

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Annual Competition

The decathlon is a series of competitions in different categories, including art, economics, essay, speech, mathematics, music, and literature. Each team consists of nine players categorized by their grade-point averages as Honors, Scholastic, and Varsity players.

This year’s theme is Technology and Humanity.

Other Valley schools that were top finishers in the California Academic Decathlon:

Division 3: Lemoore Middle College of Hanford, 13th place

Division 4: Strathmore’s Harmony Magnet Academy, a Porterville Unified magnet school, fourth place; and Glacier High School Charter of Oakhurst, chartered through Western Sierra Charter Schools, ninth place. Danny Hernandez of Harmony Magnet had the second-highest overall score in Division 4.