Southbank’s Record-breaking Achievement

Southbank students travelled to Memphis, Tennessee to compete in the United States Academic Decathlon team and made history twice over by being the first ever International School to attend the event and achieving the highest ever score in the Nationals.

The USAD is a ten subject academic decathalon which includes math, science, social science, humanities, essay writing, language and literature, art history, music theory, interview skills, public speaking and a live broadcasted science competition. A team of nine students (Grades 9-12) competes from each state with over 300 students competing.

As well as the team winning the coveted "Rookie of the Year Award" (and a new Epson printer), individual honours went to:
Sam Bodanis (2nd for the live televised science relay event)
Jack O'Connor (5th in interview skills and 12th for pubic speaking)
Naoki Koguchi (7th in mathematics and a monetary university
scholarship for being one of the overall highest scoring students in all ten events)
Stefan Mitrasinovic (11th in public speaking)
Brian Fitzpatrick (12th for music theory
Tristan Susini (top 25th percentile for his creative writing essay).