By: Echo Rogers
On Saturday, something really important happened at the Hershey Lodge, but wait, what was it again?
May 7, 2016 the USA Memory Championship held at the Hershey Lodge. Twenty-six Hershey High School students competed. Four made it into the top nine. Junior Erica Wang who earned a fourth place and broke a scoring record in the Poetry event. Hershey Middle School students also competed along with adults from states such as California, Tennessee, and Texas. They all faced numerous challenges: memorizing names and faces, numbers, poetry, cards, and words.
HHS and HMS students were divided into teams, but were scored individually. They, along with the adults, first competed in the Names and Faces event. In this, the students were faced with thirteen pages, each page containing nine photos. They had fifteen minutes for memorization and twenty minutes for recall. Spelling counted.
Junior Erica Wang, who placed fourth in this event, said she would relate images to the names. For example, a name like Harper Baker could be related to a harp and a chef’s hat.
The second event was Speed Numbers: five minutes to memorize and 10 minutes for recall. The students and adults were given one sheet with 25 rows of 20 words. Some adults opted for two sheets. The previous record of 360 digits memorized in five minutes was beaten by Alex Mullen, a medical student from Mississippi. He was able to memorize 463 words in just five minutes.
The trick? Mullen saw the numbers as letters and from that he was able to create his own little story. What he saw today for the first six numbers was a “red solo cup rattling around the head of Lucius Malfoy.” With that image, he was able to recall all six numbers.
Thirdly was the Poetry event; everyone had to memorize a 50 line poem. The catch was that points were awarded for every correctly spelled word, capital letter, and punctuation mark. Wang, who had set a record last year of 241 points, beat her own record this year, earning 278 points. Sadly, for Hershey, one of the other competitors was able to top that: Katherine He, a middle schooler from California earned 335 points.
Lastly was the Speed Cards event: 52 playing cards memorized in five minutes. In this round, competitors had two chances to memorize their cards. Their better score counted. Last year’s record was 29 seconds for 52 cards. However Mullen beat that record on his first round. Then on his second round, he not only beat his first round, but broke the world record by accurately memorizing the sequence of 52 cards in 18.653 seconds.
“Keep practicing faster and faster,” Mullen said after the round. He grouped the cards together, forming words. Everyday he practiced for at least thirty minutes to keep up his abilities.
At the end of these four events, the students and adults took a break for lunch as the scores were gathered. The top eight would continue in three sudden death rounds. Four Hershey students moved on. The top eight competitors are posted below in order of their scores:
- Alex Mullen
- Katherine He
- Brad Sundstrom
- Erica Wang (HHS Junior)
- Mallika Kodavatiganti (HHS Senior)
- Tuan Bui (HHS Freshman)
- Jesse Cui (HHS Senior)
- Jerry Yang
- Paul Mellor
The people above first competed in the Spoken Words event. They were given 200 words and had 15 minutes to memorize them. They each took a turn saying a word and staying with the sequence. Elimination occurred if the competitor said a word out of sequence. Mullen, He, Sundstrom, Wang, and Mallika Kodavatiganti continued to the next event.
The second round event was Three Strikes You’re Out. Six people from the audience went on stage and acted as another person. They gave their name, zip code, date of birth, where they lived, phone number, pet, three favorite hobbies, favorite car, and their favorite foods.
The remaining competitors had an extra 15 minutes after the audience members spoke to memorize the information. The first two mental athletes to answer three incorrect information would be eliminated.
The last three in the running were Wang, Sundstrom, and Mullen. They had to memorize two decks of cards in five minutes. Once more they went down the line each saying which card and which suit it was in sequence. Wang placed third overall, Sundstrom second, and Mullen placed first. Mullen was able to recall all but one card.
The rest of the HHS and the HMS students succeeded as well. Chad Cocco, Erica Wang, Mallika Kodavatiganti, Julian Yee, and Jesse Cui (Team A) also won an award for the highest scoring team. Their team placed first in all three of the four events.
In total, there were total of 54 competitors. The students of HHS and HMS were ranked based on their scores for each event. Their rankings are below:
HMS
Nick Blumenthal 52
Owen Brown 42
Manisha Kodavatiganti 43
Avraham Lukacher 38
Ella Pedersen 32
Amy Wu 16
Angie Bu 22
HHS
Chad Cocco 13
Jesse Cui 6
Mallika Kodavatiganti 4
Erica Wang 3
Julian Yee 19
Tuan Bui 9
Josephine Gawrys 14
Chenchen Yuan 12
John Zhuang 18
Elizabeth Abraham 27
Matthew Campbell 34
Elizabeth Nguyen 45
Mark Peschel 40
Avery Wang 26
Paige Beck 41
Scott Eberle 49
Sareena Fayaz 30
Samika Kanekar 33
Martina Yee 34
Tony Dottino, founder and chairman of the USA Memory Championship, said, “Everyone who participates is a winner.” Both HHS and HMS students benefited from this event. Not only did they make friends but they’re stretching their minds and beating national records. Plus as Mullen put it simply: “It’s fun.”
