They know where their keys are
Mechanicsburg memory team defends its national championship
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Andrew Castonguay, left, and Michael Henry try memorizing a deck of cards. They will take a second deck and try to arrange it identically from memory. (Jason Malmont/The Sentinel)
Normally one associates “a senior moment” with a temporary lapse of memory.
But for five local students, defending a national title may be another experience to cherish from their final year at Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School.
The quintet of “mental athletes” will be in New York City today to take on teams from across the country competing in the USA National Memory Championship.
The event tests the ability of individuals to memorize a random list of words, a list of numbers, a shuffled deck of cards, an unpublished poem and a mix of names and faces.
The Mechanicsburg team placed first in the high school division in 2006 - the first year they ever competed. Today, they hope to repeat history.
Ryan Kutzner, 18, of Upper Allen Township is new to the Wildcat squad. He got involved this year because some of his best friends are on the team.
“It's a lot of fun,” says Kutzner, who plans to major in physics this fall at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. “I like to flex my intellectual muscle.”
Watch out for Bronx rivals
Kutzner says he is pretty nervous, because a rival team will be out for revenge against the Mechanicsburg squad. For five years running, the team from Samuel L. Gompers School in the Bronx dominated the high school division of the competition.
Then along came Mechanicsburg - completely new to the annual tournament ... “and we destroyed them,” Kutzner says. “Gompers lost miserably last year.”
The Wildcats have heard the founder of the competition is coaching the Gompers team. “They have it in for us,” says Kutzner, who aspires to some day be a professor.
Classmate Michael Henry, also 18 of Upper Allen Township, is another new member of the Wildcat team. He joined as something to do and because he scored high in recalling sequences of numbers during team try-outs held earlier in the year.
“They dragged me into it,” Henry says. “It is a lot of fun to hang out with the guys ... and Jenn. We'll see how it goes.” He plans to attend Taylor University to study computer science.
They join three returning members of the winning squad - seniors Dan Niesen, Andrew Castonguay and Jenn Nauss.
“I'm very excited about it ... I'm looking forward to going back to keep our title,” says Nauss, 17, of Mechanicsburg.
“We came in last year with no expectations at all and decided to give it a go,” Nauss says. “We did not have any idea on the different strategies to improve memory.”
She has seen improvement as the squad prepared for competition this year. The squad has been holding practice about once a week since early February when it defeated teams from Cumberland Valley and East Pennsboro at the state competition.
Nauss plans to attend Penn State University to major in speech pathology.
Gifted support teacher Monica Shirey first learned of the contest while scanning through her e-mail. She thought it would be fun to organize a team of students to compete, but was completely surprised by the outcome the first year.
Erin Hope Luley, a 2006 Mechanicsburg graduate, broke the national record in Names and Faces and Poetry scoring 124 and 204 points respectively.
Luley is now a freshman at Penn State University studying animal sciences. She plans to compete today as an individual in the memory championship.
More students approached Shirey this year interested in representing Mechanicsburg. At one point, the Wildcats had two memory squads but the other team was eliminated in the state competition, says Shirey, team coach.
“I have practiced with them a little bit, but have not gotten myself to the point where I am competitive,” the teacher adds. “Everybody could benefit from a better memory.”
Team members have applied better memory techniques to their classes, Shirey says. For example, they can memorize a set of poems in 10 minutes compared to a couple days for the average student.
Nauss says the techniques she learned on the team has made more efficient, especially in psychology class, which involves a lot of memorization. “It does not take me as long to retrieve information.”
