In 1993, Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a third straight NBA Championship title with an average of more than 40 points per game. I remember the impressions that I had as I watched the dynasty come into being. It was simply captivating.
At the same time, another dynasty was well under way at a small high school in Eastern Arizona. Perhaps the dynasty was less glamorous and far less public, but it certainly rivals the Bulls in its duration.
It all started when a dedicated teacher took six students to compete in a new academic competition called Academic Decathlon. When the coach arrived at the competition with her students she quickly realized that the two weeks notice and scant information that she had received with respect to the competition left her team at a severe disadvantage to the students from other schools that had spent months in preparation.
After an embarrassing loss, the coach told herself and her team that they would not let it happen again and that they would win the next year. Win they did. St. Johns High not only became the regional champs but also the 3A State Champions. They repeated the feat the next year and continued on the winning streak for 23 years with no end in sight.
During those 23 years the coaching has changed four times, the students have changed every couple of years, and the subjects have changed 23 times, but the legacy of winning has not. The St. Johns High Academic Decathlon team, coming from a school with a student body of less than 500, presents itself each year as a formidable foe to schools 10 times it size.
Each student that joins that team realizes that failure is not an option. No team can become the first team to lose in a quarter century. The traveling trophy that has done no traveling for 23 years must stay at St. Johns High because there it has a permanent location.