Marshall Wins State Academic Decathlon Title

After a weekend of late-night cram sessions, brain-wrenching tests and enough anxiety for a lifetime, a team of nine 17-year-old intellectual athletes from John Marshall High School in Los Angeles won the state Academic Decathlon title Sunday--and a chance to regain the national crown the Los Angeles school last held in 1986.

In an exceptionally close competition, Marshall defeated 41 other schools, scoring 47,877 points of a possible 60,000, edging out West High School of Torrance, which racked up 47,090 points. Laguna Hills High School of Orange County placed third with 46,363 points.

Indeed, Southern California teams have dominated the state Academic Decathlon for a decade, sending local championship teams on to the nationals since 1984.

Unlike past decathlons, when one school’s dominance of individual awards hinted at who the overall winner would be, this year, with honors fairly evenly distributed, nobody could tell who would ultimately triumph. Even though Marshall was favored to win, it was only when West High was named runner-up that the Marshall team leaped into the air to celebrate.

“Right before they were about to announce second place, I started to hyperventilate,” said Marshall senior Paul Auerbach, wearing his trademark gray fisherman’s cap turned backward on his head. “My heart started pounding. As soon as they said ‘West,’ I almost had a coronary. It was really exciting.”

“I’m happy that we won. It was really cool, but it was too close (to West High’s total) for me,” said senior Ann Rose Van, who won a $2,000 scholarship as the top individual scorer in the competition. “At nationals we’re going to have to study harder so that we won’t have to wait so long to find out who won.”

Van was laconic about her accomplishment.

“It’s OK, but I think I could have done much better,” she said, turning over her medallions to her mother.

“Most of the people on the team were unsatisfied; they thought they could have done much better,” said coach Phil Chase.

But team member James Evrard, who spent part of the awards ceremony wrapped in his black trench coat and listening to the Cranberries on his CD player, thought some of his teammates were overreacting.

“They were all expecting too much; that’s why some of them are real upset,” he said. “They’re major type-A personalities, and they flip out when they don’t break a world record.”

By contrast, West High’s Naiwen Tu, the third-highest individual scorer with a raft of honors, was nothing but smiles after her team’s second-place finish.

Tu, her neck adorned with clanking gold, silver and bronze medals, had lost track of just how many hung there, and had to look down to see.

“Eight, nine, 10 . . . it should be 10,” she counted.

But between her white team cardigan and her shirt, she found another gold medal hiding. “I didn’t expect to do so well for myself,” Tu said.

Each member of the Marshall team--all seniors--won several individual awards. Others included Douglas Kleven, Elsie Lau, Sung Lee, Masaki Miyagawa, Steve Na and Linda Sui.

The 10 events in such subjects as mathematics, science and fine arts make up the grueling two-day decathlon that ends with the rowdy Super Quiz, an open-to-the-public oral exam that Marshall High won. This year it featured questions about biotechnology.

Anticipating the nationals in Chicago, team member Miyagawa said he would “take two days off and then be right back.” Then he groaned: He remembered that two weeks after the nationals, he would face another battery of tests--Advanced Placement exams for college credit.