Granada Hills Charter High School wins state decathlon for 6th time in 7 years

GRANADA HILLS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- With medals around their necks and smiles on their faces, a team of students from Granada Hills Charter High School returned to L.A. Sunday after winning the California Academic Decathlon.

It's the sixth time in seven years that the school has brought home the 1st place trophy.

"We all knew that we had put in some work toward this. Every single member of the team had a contribution toward that. Standing up together on the stage to receive that award was the best part of the whole day," senior Mark Aguila said.

That triumphant moment on stage came after a lot of hard work. This year's decathlon theme was World War II. To prepare for the intensive three-day competition, the students studied 10 different subjects.

"Not only do they have to study the objective subjects like math, social science, English, but they have to do speech, essay, interview as well. So it's all kinds of different academic topics," coach Jonathan Sturtevant said.

Now they're looking forward to taking on teams from across the country as well as international competitors in the U.S. Academic Decathlon next month.

Though everyone on the team is an academic star, the students aren't bragging about individual honors.

"What I really care about that as a team we did the best because that's really what's most rewarding," Aguila said.