ALASKA: QUESTIONS AWAIT DECATHLON CHAMPS PACK ANSWERS TO VIE FOR U.S. TITLE.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS - At 4 this morning, nine bleary-eyed El Camino Real High School seniors and six teachers were scheduled to board a bus for LAX, luggage bulging for a week in America's coldest state.

The California Academic Decathlon champions have also overpacked their brains with mathematical theorems and literary quotations, with music scores and art critiques. They hope to outsmart formidable rivals from Texas, Illinois and Wisconsin in the United States Academic Decathlon in Anchorage, Alaska, this week.

The all-senior, all-rookie team will compete Thursday through Saturday in the shadow of past El Camino teams that won the 1998 national championship, five state decathlons and eight city titles.

``Now that we've gotten this far, it's pretty much a matter of pride,'' said Scott Lulovics of West Hills. ``It's for the school. It's a great experience.''

Since winning the state competition March 18, the nine have been cloistered in the school's rooftop lounge for as many as 10 hours a day, poring over everything from economics texts to political analyses of classical music compositions. Never mind about last week's spring break, what with Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud and Mary Shelley to bone up on.

For much of the past year, students have done nothing but study, eat and take tests together.

``With the hours that we put in, it gets tedious,'' complained Walter Ching of Northridge, a math whiz who expertly plays the part of team cynic. Some team members have calculated that at minimum wage, they could have made about $10,000 apiece for the time they've studied.

And it hasn't been terribly easy.

Taped to bookshelves across an entire wall of the students' penthouse were 3-foot-high placards with multicolored handwritten notes, each of them attempting to cover every contextually significant fact for a single piece of music.

One of the hundreds of scribbled notes read, ``Council of Trent - Paul III - 1545-1563.''

So what does the Council of Trent have to do with the 16th century composition ``O Magnum Mysterium?''

``They almost banned polyphony in religious music,'' responded Samantha Henry of West Hills.

Oh, yeah; polyphony: music with two or more melodic parts sounded together, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, and not quite heresy, according to Pope Paul III.

Immersed in such esoterica for the entire school year, the team members have spent the past several weeks filling in the gaps in their rather frightening command of the obscure, said Dennis Kuo of Chatsworth.

``We're making sure we haven't left anything out,'' said Kuo, checking quotes in Shelley's ``Frankenstein,'' and reviewing the finer points of economists' theories on entrepreneurship.

Ching praised co-coaches Melinda Owens and Chris Cerone, who are guiding their second team with the help of former coaches Mark Johnson and Dave Roberson and other teachers, including Becky Gessert for art and speech, Lillian Ruben for competitive interviews and Jerry Hickman for math.

``I think the coaches and the teachers' help, it's probably what makes the team,'' Ching said. ``That's why we're able to win.''

But luck also plays a part, in the eyes of Aria Haghighi of West Hills.

``It's all going to come down to ... the draw of the question,'' he said, adding that ``on any given day, I think, a team's score can vary 2,000 to 3,000 points.''

That should be reassuring to anyone who knows what they're up against: The Texas team from the suburbs of Houston, which in its state championship scored 1,276 points more than El Camino, which was third in the nation with 45,450, a few points less than the Illinois team from Chicago.

Regardless of who comes out on top, there will still be the smell of crisp Alaska air, a chance to see killer whales and hear the crunch of glacial ice under one's Nikes.

``I think it's great,'' Lulovics said. ``When else would I be going to Alaska?''

It would still be nice to win, said Elan Bar of Woodland Hills.

``When El Camino won in '98, they met President Clinton,'' he noted.

After winning the city and state titles, however, ``the rest is just icing on the cake,'' said Ryan Ruby of Woodland Hills.

Just in case, the coaches continued giving pop quizzes to team members and cards with tiny ovals to pencil in. Because only half the test is from study guides the U.S. Academic Decathlon sells, team members also had to do their own research, attempting to remember such things as the fact that Freud's daughter, Anna, was born in 1895.

``They're sort of cursed with too much knowledge,'' said Cerone, after an interviewer's boorish question about the Beatles launched a protracted discussion yielding several conflicting answers.

The studying is almost done. Students are now eyeing the competition, especially the fierce reputation of some of the teams.

``I wonder if the Texas team has steaks all day,'' mused Kuo, grinning over a sandwich - one of many meals supplied in rotation by team parents.

``Yeah, they feed them rare steak,'' chuckled co-coach Owens. ``to give 'em blood-lust.''

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Photo:

Coach Chris Cerone, center with beard, and the El Camino Real High team, from left, Samantha Henry, Dennis Kuo, Alan Whittenberg, Scott Lulovics, Elan Bar, Aria Haghighi, Grace Giles and Ryan Ruby, are going to Alaska.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer