His Talents Extend Beyond Classroom

Coaches are jealous. Classmates are envious. Teachers are in awe.

Marcus Hammond is Los Angeles Marshall’s teenage version of Albert Einstein, except he enjoys watching ESPN as much as studying physics.

He earned a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT and has never received a grade other than an A on his report card.

Over four years at Marshall, he has participated in football, soccer, golf and track.

“He’s about the most outstanding kid I’ve been around,” football Coach Andy Moran said.

On Monday, Hammond was honored by the City Section as the recipient of its award for exemplifying the principles of “Pursuing Victory With Honor.”

He will attend Yale in the fall, having turned down Stanford, Princeton and Dartmouth.

Hammond, 5 feet 11, 210 pounds, had more trouble learning to throw a spiral than getting an A in calculus.

There were Pop Warner quarterbacks with stronger arms. But he practiced for hours in the summer of his junior year, deploying a volleyball net to simulate offensive linemen so he could perfect passing the ball at the correct trajectory.

He passed for 1,086 yards and eight touchdowns in his senior season. It was his proudest time of high school, being a team captain and starting at quarterback.

“I never had illusions of playing pro football,” he said. “I went into it because I enjoy it and took out of it everything I could.”

This week, he played for Marshall in the City golf championships Monday and Tuesday and competed in the shotput at Thursday’s City track preliminaries.

There’s no telling where Hammond’s interests might take him at Yale. He wants to understand “how everything works.” He could become an engineer, a scientist or an inventor.

But sports have made him whole and left him with an understanding of what it takes to succeed.

“In sports, you get out of it what you put into it,” he said. “It’s somewhere to meet people. It teaches you how to get along with people, even ones you don’t like. You have a common goal and can’t let petty differences get in the way.”

His mother is a college professor. His father is a lawyer. After learning that his son was perfect on the SAT, his father, John, joked, “That proves he must have been switched at birth. A kid of ours couldn’t have done that.”

Of the 1.4 million students who took the SAT from the class of 2003, 944 received perfect scores, according to the College Board, which administers the test.

Hammond said his parents have always “had my back.”

“One of the keys is having someone to go to, whether it’s a parent or teacher,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I deserve all the credit for my accomplishments. If not for my parents, teachers and friends, none of it would have happened.”

There’s one quality that should be helpful for Hammond throughout his life.

“I’ve always been curious and never afraid to ask questions,” he said.

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Saturday’s Southern Section track and field finals at Cerritos College are the perfect setting for sophomore Rodney Glass of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame to show why he’s a rising athletic standout.

Glass qualified first in the Division III 200 meters with a time of 22.18 seconds last week. He’s also a promising running back for Notre Dame’s football team.

“He’s getting better all the time,” Coach Joe McNab said. “He’s a hidden talent.”

Glass rushed for more than 1,700 yards on the sophomore football team last fall. He was comfortable gaining experience away from the varsity level.

“The progression has gone well,” he said.

This fall, he’ll probably be in the same backfield with running back Cary Harris and quarterback Garrett Green, both track participants, giving two-time defending Division III champion Notre Dame perhaps its fastest offensive backfield in school history.

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The boys’ basketball team at Van Nuys Montclair Prep could be getting a boost this summer with the expected arrival of 6-9 freshman Jin Soo Kim from South Korea. He has been accepted to the school and paid his deposit but still must finalize some paperwork. If he shows up, Coach Greg Patterson needs only to learn to say “dunk” in Korean.

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Second baseman Willie Cabrera of Chatsworth is closing in on the state record for hits in a season. He has 62. The record is 68 held by Brett Jenkins of Sacramento Rancho Cordova and Gerald Laird of Westminster La Quinta.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.