March 29, 2012
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Manoogian-Demirdjian School Students Compete in Southern California Private School Academic Decathlon

Competing against hundreds of local peers, 25 students from the AGBU Manoogian-Demirdjian School (MDS) in Canoga Park, California, won a total of 26 medals, 10 of which were gold medals, at the Southern California Private School Academic Decathlon on February 5, 2012. Even though MDS had the smallest enrollment of any school in the competition, it fielded the largest team, competed in ten categories and was the only school to enter in three of the four categories. Normally, smaller schools confine their students to the small school Division 4 category, but AGBU MDS put its best students in the highly competitive Division 2 category, which is usually reserved for much larger schools. "We went up against Mater Dei and Notre Dame, schools that have over 2,000 students, and we still won more than our fair share of medals," said AGBU MDS Decathlon Coach Jason Strouse. "I think our ability to not only compete with these schools, but to compete with success, shows that AGBU MDS is one of the top private schools in Southern California." Also, while the other schools practiced every day after school for as long as ten months, the AGBU MDS team had only two weeks to prepare for the Decathalon. "I wasn't worried at all," said Strouse. "My team is able to get an extraordinary amount of work done in a very short period of time."

In the essay competition, the AGBU MDS students competed against nearly 200 students and won five of the nine gold medals. Gold medal essay winners included senior students Arno Ekmekji, Gary Vartanian (who also won a gold medal in Mathematics), and Nicole Yeghiazarian; and junior students Patrick Galoostian and Alina Sargsyan. Senior Alex Yeghiazarian won two gold medals – in Literature and Science, and gold medals were also awarded to Melkon Makerian in Mathematics and Anais Zarifian in Science. "The students' success at the decathlon, especially in the writing competition, was one of the highlights of my career," said Jason Strouse, the MDS Decathalon Coach and English Department Chair. "It's an honor to call myself their teacher."

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