El Camino Real High School

Infobox High School
name= El Camino Real High School


headmaster=
principal= Dave Fehte
motto=
established= 1969
type= Public
location= Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
enrollment= < 4,000
campus= Suburban
colors= Royal blue and camel
nicknames= Conquistadores
conference=
website= [http://ecr.lausd.k12.ca.us/ Official website] |

El Camino Real High School (also known locally as "ECR" and by some more recently as "ELCO") is a public secondary school located in the Woodland Hills district of the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California. It operates within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The school, founded in 1969, was designed to emulate a small college campus, with a large central "quad" and an open campus policy.

ECR serves portions of Woodland Hills and West Hills and also maintains a sizable "traveling" student population from other areas of the district.

Athletics

El Camino Real's swim team was a powerhouse in the late 70s and 80s winning every city title between 1977 and 1989

El Camino Real's Girls soccer team, coached by Eric Choi, has won 8 CIF Los Angeles City Section Championships in a row (2001-2008).Fact|date=April 2007

El Camino Real's Boys Soccer Team, coached by David Hussey, has won 3 CIF Los Angeles City Section Championships (1999, 2001, 2002). They have also been Runner up twice (1997, 2008). The team has also reached at least the semi-finals 7 times (six in a row between 1997 to 2002) in the last 12 years.

El Camino Real's boys' volleyball team, coached by Doug Coleman, went to city championship in 2008 first time ever in history of ELCO. Beating Taft for the first time.

El Camino Real's boys' tennis team, coached by Marvin Jones, gained notoriety by winning five consecutive city championships from 2000-2004. In the late 1970s, El Camino Real was noted for its marching band, led by Karl Raschkes, which won four of the first six Los Angeles City Marching Band championships (1976, 1977, 1979, 1980). Fact|date=April 2007

El Camino Real's boy's golf team, coached by Eric Choi, gained recognition by winning their first Los Angeles CIF City Section Championship in 2007.

In the late 1970s ECR football was an LA City powerhouse, led by then All City quarterback #11 Jeff (Cap) Caprio. Although short in stature, Cap had a rifle for an arm and was a great leader. The defense was led by High School All-American Rich Gray, "The Hulk" as he was known was an unstoppable force. Caprio went on to Colorado then finished his career at CSUN.

[http://www.ecrbaseball.com ECR Baseball] has been a baseball powerhouse for many years and won its last City Championship in 2005.Fact|date=April 2007

El Camino Real's wrestling team, coached by Terry Fischer, has won the City Championships in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The team won four consecutive championships in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000, a City record.

El Camino's Track and Field and Cross Country teams are quite outstanding. Jared Long had quite a year winning the 2007 Cross Country City Championship with a 15:39 [ [http://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/la-preps-xc07-city12,1,1384577.story latimes.com/sports/highschool] ] and won the 3200 meters at City for Track and Field in 2008 with 9:46.41. The Pole Vault also proved to be a strength; Kyle Ballew took first place at city vaulting 12-06.00 and Matt Jenowski placed second with 12 even. Shot Putter, David Mahoney also competed well throwing 57-01.50, taking first place [ [http://www.dyestatcal.com//?pg=dyestatcal2008Track-Road-To-State-Sections-LA-City-Section-Finals-22-Results&PHPSESSID=96bab945e619ec87849dd8339c768f8a nilstrom.com] ] . The Boy's Vasity Track and Field team placed second at City Championships in 2008 beating acclaimed rival Birmingham.

Academic Competitions

Academic Decathlon Team

El Camino Real High School has a popular and successful Academic Decathlon team. The team won its first competition under then coach Mark Johnson, taking home the Los Angeles City title in 1989-1990 [ [http://acadecscores.gilslotd.com/wiki/Regionals/California California Regionals] ] .They would later go on to finish 2nd that year at the State Competition. The team has remained successful in competition, and has won National titles in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2007 [ [http://acadecscores.gilslotd.com/wiki/National Academic Decathlon National Champions] ] . With their fourth national title in 2005, the team recorded back-to-back national titles, the first for any school in 20 years. The 2005 team was the first in Academic Decathlon history to win state and national competitions as a wild card team, when they lost the city competition but were allowed to continue as a wild card. In 2006, the team was not able to win the city competition, but entered into the state competition as a wild card. El Camino was not able to win the 2006 State Competition, losing to cross-town rival Taft High School, however, they still garnered the second highest score in the nation. El Camino Real's now five national titles stands with J.J Pearce from Richardson, Texas.

2007 marked records for El Camino Real's Academic Decathlon Team. They have now achieved the 1st team ever to win as a wild card at State competition (and they've done it twice), as well as winning with siblings from a previous year (Namely, Sam Farahmand and Jiyoung Kim who are the respective siblings of Ben Farahmand and Jihwan Kim of the 2005 National Champions. Fact|date=April 2007This occurred in school history once previously, 2004 National Champion member Adrian Wittenberg (Varsity) is the younger sister of 2001 National Champion member Alan Wittenberg Varsity). Moreover, as of 2007, Frank Soberanis holds the second highest Varsity score ever: 8,920 of a possible 10000 [ [http://acadecscores.gilslotd.com/wiki/Scorers#Top_Varsity Top 10 Varsity List] ] .

Mock Trial

El Camino also has a powerful Mock Trial competition team. The team was created in 2008 by Christopher Abkarians and was sponsored by Michelle Greene. With 17 full-time members, Mock Trial represents a vast array of dedicated students interested in performance and law. In 2008, the team faced two competitors- it was ultimately defeated by a narrow margin by the defending champions- a valiant effort for the competitions only rookie team.

Model UN Competition

The school's Model United Nations Team earned awards in 1976 and 1977 at the Model UN competitions at the University of California-Riverside and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).Fact|date=April 2007 The teams were headed by Social Studies Department teachers Kenneth Craft and Murray Shapiro. Participants in the program during this time period included noted Bay Area attorney Michael A. Futterman and Austin, Texas semiconductor and software executive Alan R. Weiss.

Envirothon

El Camino Real has also won the Envirothon regional competition 7 consecutive years in a row placing 2 teams last year at the State division at 2nd place and 5th place. El Camino's 2006 Envirothon team placed first in the entire state, and went on to place fourth in the nationals competition in Canada.

JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society)

[http://jets.org/ JETS] promotes interest in engineering, science, math, and technology in high school students and provides them with real-world engineering teamwork and problem-solving experiences. The Team participates in the [http://jets.org/teams/index.cfm JETS-TEAMS] (Test of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics, and Science) Competition that occurs annually in March and is hosted and sponsored by the [http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/ced/precollege/mesa/highschool/competition.htm Viterbi] School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC).

In 2006, the ECR JETS Team (captain: Kieran Gupta; coach: Sarvenaz Morshedi) won 2nd place at the Southern California Regional Varsity Competition, missing First Place to Beverly Hills High School by one point.

In 2007, the ECR JETS Team (captain: Kieran Gupta; coach: Sue Schuster) again won 2nd place at the Southern California Regional Varsity Competition, increasing their score significantly by 7 points but once again missing First Place to Beverly Hills High School by only one point.

In 2008, the ECR JETS Team (co-captains: Jillian Cohn and Karen Shein; coach: Sue Schuster) won 1st place at the Southern California Regional Varsity Competition, defeating rival Beverly Hills High School.

JROTC

The school also has a Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. It is known primarily today as a powerhouse in Academic competitions. It was established in 1979 and was ranked, based on field meet results, the top NJROTC unit in Los Angeles until 2007, when cross-town rival Reseda NJROTC defeated El Camino at the annual Area 11 Super Bowl and moved on to the Navy National JROTC Championship in Pensacola, Florida. In 2006, ECR NJROTC placed 1st at the Greater Los Angeles Field Meet, 3rd place at Serra High School Pre-Regional Field Meet, Chaffey High School 6th Annual Tiger Challenge. The unit placed 4th in last year's Area 11 Regional Field Meet but failed to place overall this year despite earlier success. As of 2007, the program has 84 cadets enrolled, which is part of an overall decreasing trend over the past several years.

Fine Arts

ECR also has two notable choral groups, under the direction of Terrence Fischer for the last 15 years. These groups consist of the El Camino Real Girls Choir, an SSAA choir composed of girls from freshman to senior year, and the Camerata, an SATB choir composed of mostly juniors and seniors.Both groups have achieved considerable success. In 2007, the girls choir performed Stephen Paulus' "Songs of Meditation" with several other women's choirs, a production by MidAmerica Productions. It was only the second performance of the piece with an orchestra, originally commissioned by the Tucson Boys Choir. In the summer of 2007, Camerata also traveled to Lucerne, Switzerland to perform.

ECR is also renowned for its drama program, cited as one of LAUSD's finest theatre programs.

Notable Alumni

* Greg Graffin: Singer for Bad Religion
* Christopher Mintz-Plasse: American actor, Superbad, Role Models
* America Ferrera: Golden Globe-, Screen Actors Guild-, and Emmy Award-winning actress, "Ugly Betty", "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants". [http://movies.nytimes.com/person/302580/America-Ferrera/biography]
* Conor Jackson: Arizona Diamondbacks
* Randy Wolf: Houston Astros
* Jamal Anderson: former running back for the Atlanta Falcons

External links

* [http://ecr.lausd.k12.ca.us/ El Camino Real High School]
* [http://www.geocities.com/ecrnjrotc/ El Camino Real Naval JROTC]
* [http://www.ecrdrama.com/ El Camino Real Drama Department]

References