Granada Hills Charter High School’s national Academic Decathlon champions to be honored at rally

Members of the Granada Hills Charter High School’s national Academic Decathlon championship team will be honored during a welcome rally at the school on Monday.

The rally will take place at 8 a.m. at the San Fernando Valley school’s flagpole, officials said. The school is located at 10535 Zelzah Ave.

A perennial powerhouse in academic competitions, Granada Hills Charter High School continued to build on that legacy Saturday by winning the national 2016 Academic Decathlon for the second year in a row.

The win marks the fifth time in the last six years the school has claimed the national title.

The team of nine students scored 54,195 points out of a possible 60,000 in the rigorous three-day competition, beating 48 other national and international teams. Highland Park High School in Texas placed second during the competition in Anchorage.

Students were tested in 10 events: art, economics, essay, interview, language and literature, mathematics, music, science, social science and speech. The study topic this year was India.

Granada Hills team members are Mark Aguila, Julian Duran, Isha Gupta, Joshua Lin, Christopher Lo, Aishah Mahmud, Melissa Santos, Mayeena Ulkarim and Jorge Zepeda.

The students were jubilant after the team’s name was announced, and relieved to have continued the school’s winning tradition.

“It’s huge relief,” said Melissa, 17, who was the top scoring student overall. “We were sitting there clasping each others’ hands because this is legacy for Granada Hills and for California to keep, and we didn’t want the hard work and trust everyone placed in the team to go to waste.”

The team is scheduled to return to Los Angeles on Sunday.