The first round of the 2019 San Joaquin County Academic Decathlon is coming up on Saturday, Jan. 26.

Day one features speeches and interviews, running from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the county Office of Education, 2707 Transworld Drive, Stockton. This portion of the Academic Decathlon competition is not open to the public.

Escalon High School Aca Dec coach Joshua Cohen is in his second year with the team and said the students are getting ready for the two weekends of competition The second event is set for Saturday, Feb. 2 and that will feature the battery of tests and the popular game-show style Super Quiz that is open to the public. That will be hosted this year at Lathrop High School, 647 Spartan Way, Lathrop and the theme for this year’s Super Quiz is ‘The ‘60s.’ Day 2 competition runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We have a nearly full team this year and hope to improve upon our finish from last year,” Cohen said.

Scoring team members include third year participants Gloria Rodriguez and Sherry Tsieng, juniors; second year team member Ernesto Perez, junior; and first year scoring team members, juniors Christian Davalos, Mya Beary, Joey Meneses, Mason Hernandez, Ian Gregg and Jakob Hunter. Hernandez was an alternate last year.

The Aca Dec team meets for regular study sessions and most members also do work on the subject matter outside of school hours. They will be competing against a number of other schools from San Joaquin County at the event.