It will be hard for senior Abel Sen to improve on his performance. After all, the he scored a school record 9302.8 in the Academic Decathlon Regional meet last weekend. Now he has his eyes set on the state meet Feb. 26.

“I think I did better than I expected,” Abel Sen said. “I certainly worked very hard, but I didn’t  imagine the amount of success I had or the success as a team.”

Sen and the rest of the AcDec team has been preparing every week either after school on Wednesday or Thursday as a team, but most of the team members’ practice is individual practicing.

“Most of the team studies on their own,” Mumford said. “We usually have about four or five kids come each day but I would say about 90 percent of the studying is done on their own.”

If Sen is able to duplicate his performance at state, it could pay off.

“If [Abel] does get that score at state and wins then he will get 3,500 dollars to college tuition,” Mumford said.

On top of Sen’s individual performance, the team placed fourth, giving them hope of a top finish at state.

“I feel like we did well at regionals,” senior Visakh Madathil said. “We had a lot of individual success like Abel, but as a team I think we could have done better. At state, we hope to finish in the top five, something I think we are totally capable of.”