Pentathlon Welcome Letter

Welcome to the United States Academic Pentathlon!

Pentathlon is about the people you’ll meet along the way—the coaches who will mentor you, the competitors who will challenge you, and the teammates who will become your lifelong friends.

Academic Pentathlon will allow you, as a middle school student, a chance to start experiencing the benefits of Academic Decathlon before entering high school.

 
Academic Pentathlon isn’t about demonstrating how good a student you already are. It’s about daring to push your limits. It’s about the people you’ll meet along the way—the coaches who will mentor you, the competitors who will challenge you, and the teammates who will become your lifelong friends.

 
As Pentathletes you’ll learn an exciting new theme each year, themes like World War II, India, and New Alternatives in Energy: Ingenuity and Innovation. You’ll explore five subjects connected to that theme and you’ll learn to move an audience not just with facts and rhetoric, but with confidence. You’ll never do any of this alone, you’ll be working with a team—a team composed of students with a wide range of grades but a single shared goal.
 
You should join Academic Pentathlon not because that goal will be easy to achieve, but because it will be hard. You and your teammates may study more than you ever have before, not knowing whether you will take home ten medals each—or none at all.

 
I invite you to become part of a program that you may think is over your head, until you realize you can reach higher as a team. I invite you to struggle and I invite you to learn—not just to read, but to understand; not just to win, but to lead.


Dr. Les Martisko
Administrator