Marshall Advances in Academic Decathlon : Education: L.A. high school wins key portion of national competition and is poised to regain title it held 8 years ago.

A team of nine quiz kids from Marshall High School bested students from 38 states in a key portion of the U.S. Academic Decathlon competition Saturday, bringing them one step closer to regaining the glory of eight years ago, when the school first captured the national title.

Before a noisy crowd in a ritzy hotel ballroom, the school’s decathlon team took top honors in the Super Quiz event that culminated the two-day showcase of academic prowess.

The winners of the entire competition will be announced today, and though the Super Quiz score accounts for only one-tenth of the competition, its winners generally go on to win the decathlon.

“We’re excited and we’re where we want to be,” said Marshall team member Paul Auerbach. “This is just part of the whole event . . . (but) it’s a good sign.”

Teams from Illinois, Arizona and Tennessee tied for second place in the Super Quiz, and a team from Oklahoma placed third.

The Super Quiz is the only one of the competition’s 10 events that is conducted and scored publicly. Contests in mathematics, literature and speech and other subjects are all graded privately, and team scores are tallied secretly.

The Marshall team began the competition Friday as favorites to win. Their score at the state competition, held last month in Fresno, was higher than any other team in the nation, according to Judy Combs, director of the California Academic Decathlon.

Marshall High last won the national title in 1987, becoming media darlings when its team--drawn from neighborhoods in the Silver Lake-Los Feliz area that include low-income and immigrant residents--beat wealthy, suburban schools from around the country.

Its coach, David Tokofsky, became a symbol of young, dedicated teachers with a special knack for motivating students, but he later stepped down as coach, contending that the school district did little to reward academic success.

Last year, the national title was also won by a Los Angeles Unified school--Taft High in Woodland Hills. Teams from Los Angeles have won five of the 14 Academic Decathlon national titles.

During Saturday’s Super Quiz, decathletes answered questions from the field of biotechnology. The questions were asked aloud, and each team member was given seven seconds to respond by punching the answer into a computer key pad.

The kick-off question was: “Agrobacterium tumefaciens infects: 1) Plants 2) Humans 3) Mice 4) Bacteria 5) Tumors.”

When team member James Evrard discovered that he had answered that first question correctly (plants), he raised his hand in the air to signal his teammates, even before their score was flashed onto a giant video screen.

Another good omen for the Marshall team came when Ann Rose Van, the top individual scorer at the state contest, was chosen to present her prepared speech at a showcase Friday night, a sign that she may be a medalist in the speech category.

Also competing for the Marshall team were Sung Lee, Linda Sui, Masaki Miyagawa, Elsie Lau, Steve Na and Douglas Kleven. Phil Chase is the team’s coach.

This year’s decathlon drew close media scrutiny after the Illinois state champions, Steinmetz High School, confessed that they had cheated by acquiring copies of the state tests in advance. The team was disqualified and its coach, Jerry Plecki, resigned after admitting that the team had also cheated in the 1994 competition.

The students--even those from Chicago’s Whitney Young High School, which replaced Steinmetz as Illinois state champs--seemed unaffected by the scandal. Most said they were more concerned about the decathlon’s reputation.

“I think it’s a sad thing that this is the way the decathlon has garnered attention, through negative press,” said Marshall’s Auerbach.

The Marshall team studied for nine months to prepare for the national finals, and after arriving in Chicago on Wednesday, did not allow even the temptation of a ride to the top of the Sears Tower or a late-night run to a blues club to distract them. Instead, they remained in their rooms, reviewing notes and preparing to compete.

But now that the contest is over, the team plans to celebrate.

“First we’re gonna throw away those chains that kept us in our rooms,” said Na after embracing his teammates. “We’re gonna burn our notes.”