Royal High Topples Academic Giant Westlake — Historic Victory Sends Team to State

Royal High Breaks Through: Simi Valley’s Highlanders Win Ventura County Academic Decathlon for the First Time

(CLAIR | Simi Valley, CA) — For years, the Ventura County Academic Decathlon belonged to someone else.

Westlake High School had made the county championship its property. Five consecutive first-place finishes. A dynasty built on preparation, coaching, and institutional momentum. When other schools showed up to compete, they were largely competing for second.

That changed this year.

On February 9, at an awards ceremony in Camarillo, Royal High School was announced as the first-place team in the 2026 Ventura County Academic Decathlon — the first time in the school’s history it had ever won. According to the Ventura County Office of Education, Royal’s sixteen-member team earned 53 individual awards including 16 gold medals, along with eight team awards and five first-place finishes. Westlake finished second. Channel Islands High School placed third.

For Royal — and for Simi Valley — it was a moment a long time coming.

What It Takes to Win
Academic Decathlon is not a spelling bee. It is not a single Saturday of trivia questions.

As described by the California Academic Decathlon, students compete across 10 academic events — seven timed multiple choice exams covering art, economics, music, literature, mathematics, science, and social science, plus a 50-minute written essay, two speeches, and a personal interview. The competition runs for weeks. Teams prepare for months.

Every member has a role, and the scores add up across every event. A great math student doesn’t carry the team alone. Neither does a gifted speaker. The competition demands depth across every subject — and it demands it from students of every academic level.

Teams are built deliberately: three students whose GPA falls in the “A” category, three in the “B” category, and three in the “C” category, according to the Academic Decathlon’s official structure. It is one of the few academic competitions specifically designed to be inclusive. A student who struggles in one class can still be a difference-maker.

That structure makes the competition hard to game. A school can’t simply enter its nine highest-achieving students and expect to dominate. Depth, preparation, and teamwork all matter.

This year’s theme was “The Roaring Twenties.” As reported by the California Academic Decathlon, students explored Jazz Age art, music, and literature — with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as the featured long work — alongside algebra and trigonometry, electricity and magnetism, 1920s U.S. economics, and the social upheavals that defined the era.

Royal’s students weren’t just memorizing facts. They were building a cross-disciplinary understanding of a decade — its sounds, its science, its financial collapse, its literature, and its soul — and defending that understanding under pressure, in timed exams, in front of judges, one subject at a time.

Ending a Dynasty
To understand what Royal accomplished, you have to understand what it was up against.

As reported by the Simi Valley Acorn, Westlake High School had won the Ventura County Academic Decathlon for five consecutive years heading into this competition. Nine schools entered: Adolfo Camarillo, Channel Islands, Fillmore, Oak Park, Pacifica, Royal, Santa Susana, Thousand Oaks, and Westlake.

Royal had been in that field before. Year after year, the Highlanders competed. And year after year, another school climbed to the top of the podium.

This year was different. According to the Ventura County Office of Education’s official announcement, Royal’s team didn’t just edge past the competition — they dominated. The 53 individual awards and 16 gold medals came from a team that didn’t merely survive the gauntlet. It thrived. The VCOE named Priyal Choudhary the team’s MVP for outstanding individual performance.

The Simi Valley Unified School District Board of Education formally recognized the victory at a recent board meeting, where district leaders praised the students and the scale of what they had achieved. District staff told the board that the team’s success reflects long hours of preparation and strong coaching leadership — the kind of commitment the competition demands from anyone who wants to win it.

A Long Wait for Simi Valley
The last time a Simi Valley Unified team advanced to the California State Academic Decathlon, George W. Bush was beginning his second term.

According to the Simi Valley Acorn, the last time a local team qualified for the state competition was 2004, when Simi Valley High School advanced. Four years earlier, in 2000, SVHS had done even more — winning the state competition outright and later placing second at nationals.

That was more than two decades ago. A generation of Royal students has come and gone since a Simi Valley school competed at this level. The coaches who prepared those early-2000s teams have long since retired. The students from those years now have children of their own.

Now Royal is headed back to the state stage.

The Road to Santa Clara
As reported on the California Academic Decathlon’s official website, the state competition runs March 19–22 at the Santa Clara Marriott. It brings together top teams from counties across California for a multi-day event — written exams, essays, speeches, interviews, and the Super Quiz relay.

The stakes don’t stop there. According to local news reports covering county competitions statewide, the California state champion earns a berth at the U.S. Academic Decathlon, scheduled for April 23–25, 2026 in Garden Grove.

Ventura County knows that path well. As noted by the VCOE, county teams have qualified for nationals six times — placing second in 2000 and 2002, and winning national championships in 1999, 2003, 2008, and 2009. All of those national trips started exactly where Royal stands right now: with a county championship in hand.

The state competition will not be easy. Teams from every major county in California will arrive in Santa Clara with similar preparation, similar talent, and similar ambition. Many will have been to state before. Royal will be arriving for the first time.

That could be a disadvantage. Or it could be fuel.

More Than a Trophy
Academic Decathlon wins don’t show up on athletic scoreboards or stadium announcement systems. The students who compete don’t get varsity letters for memorizing monetary theory or delivering a prepared speech about the Harlem Renaissance.

But for the students involved, this is something real. Months of evenings studying. Weekends given over to mock competitions and practice interviews. A commitment that rivals any athletic program in intensity — and one that requires a different kind of toughness.

Royal’s team built something this season. Coach Heather Jenkins and her 16-member squad put in the hours, mastered the Roaring Twenties from every angle, and delivered when it counted.

The result: a county championship, a school record, and a ticket to the biggest academic stage in California.

Simi Valley will be watching from Santa Clara.

Sources: Simi Valley Unified School District Board of Education meeting transcript and presentation; Ventura County Office of Education 2026 Academic Decathlon announcement (vcoe.org); Simi Valley Acorn, John Loesing, February 14, 2026; California Academic Decathlon (academicdecathlon.org); statewide county competition reports, February 2026.