Following their state victory last month, nine members of La Reina High School's mock trial team will travel today to Wilmington, Del., to compete in the national championship this weekend.

The team, which won its first state title after years of being Ventura County champion, will compete against high school teams from almost every state.

"The pride wells up immediately when you see them perform," La Reina coach Thomas Mundell said Monday. "It's amazing to watch them in action. They are articulate and eloquent. They fight hard, but they fight clean. I'm always proud of them."

La Reina is a Catholic all-girls' high school in Thousand Oaks. Since 1990, its mock trial team has been named Ventura County champion 15 times. Last year, the team took third place at the state championship, which still was a huge accomplishment because it faced almost 600 other teams, Mundell said. Many of the team members returned to capture this year's title.

"This particular team is extremely enthusiastic," said Mundell, who is a civil attorney. "They never win the state. It's a huge thrill for them. And it's a daunting task. They're just excited to be going. We'll do our best."

The mock trial is a competition that simulates a courtroom case. Team members serve as attorneys, witnesses, jurors, even the bailiff. The team is judged on the performance of individual members and as a team.

The competition begins Wednesday with some scrimmages. The real matches occur Friday and Saturday, with the winners crowned at a banquet Saturday night.

To prepare, the La Reina team was required to start from scratch. On April 2, just a few days after the state win, Mundell received a 117-page case file for the national competition.

The civil case — a switch from the state contest's usual criminal trial — involves a foreign company suing an American corporation that doesn't want to sell the Port of Wilmington because it claims the foreign company has ties to terrorism. The foreign company is trying to force the sale through the courts.

"I like it much worse," said Amanda Mundell, 18, the team captain and Thomas' daughter. "It's really complicated, with different legal issues, and it's really long."

Thomas Mundell said the team has had to work every day for the past five weeks to prepare for the competition.

Teammate Lauren Dansey, 17, who hopes to be an attorney one day, likes the case.

"It's not as playful as some of the other cases we've gotten, which are murder mystery," she said. "But I like it better because the characters are a little more grown up and it's a little more realistic. You get to play around with it more."

Thomas Mundell said the hardest part about the nationals was choosing who would go. La Reina's original team has two dozen girls. The national competition allows only nine girls per team.

"We had so many talented kids, and we've left people sitting on the bench here who could have done extremely well. It was awful," he said.

Jake Finch's e-mail address is alljake@hotmail.com.