Mnemonic - Articles
On Saturday, April 13, 2002 ConEdison hosted the Fifth Annual USA Memory Championship at their corporate headquarters in New York City.
The top winner of this year's competition was presented with a pair of Business Class Round trip tickets to London, courtesy of British Airways, a sponsor of the USA Memory Championship since its inception in 1997. While in London, our USA Memory Champion will compete in the World Memory Championship in August of this year.
Thirteen Mental Athletes from around the country came to match their skills against reigning champion Scott Hagwood. As the day unfolded, it appeared that he would be given a run for his money...the scores were so close that no one could predict the outcome until it's arrival!
"I could really feel the pressure," said Scott to a reporter from the Fayetteville Observer, a newspaper from his hometown. One could expect that as the defending champion, but as the day progressed, Scott's nerves started to challenge him. "Last year, I walked in as a nobody...an unknown. All I had to do was focus on my memory skills and not worry about the pressure of the title or being the one to beat."
The day began with the Names and Faces competition. Scott won that event with 96.5 points but Mykie Pidor (88.5 points) and Shin Fukuda (84.5 points) were close behind and keeping the pressure on. It is also important to mention that Scott managed to recall 97 out of 99 first names in the event, only losing 1/2 point for a spelling mistake.
The second event, Random Words, proved to be a mental shaking ground for Scott. Coral Parmar won the event with a record of 95 words. Scott placed second with 89 words (also breaking his previous record of 86) and Christopher Turner placed third with 84 words. Ironically, had Scott not misspelled the word "SADDLE" as "SADDEL" he would have just bumped Coral's score and won with 97 words. It is doubtful that Scott will ever forget how to spell that one!
The afternoon started off with Speed Numbers. Newcomer Richard Rubin, a software engineer from Alpharetta Georgia, won the event with 88 digits. Silver was taken by Mykie Pidor with 57 digits and Bronze by Coral Parmar with 55 digits. Only recalling 40 digits, Scott was still holding his Championship position but only by 50 points. An equally as tight race was going on between Mykie and Coral, only separated by 47 points.
The toughest event, the unpublished Poem, would prove to be the decision maker. Newcomer James Kot won the event with 159 points followed by Shin Fukuda with 144 points and newcomer Nelson Shih took third with 131 points. At the end of the scoring, Scott was holding the lead by 150 points. Shin Fukuda overtook Mykie's second place standing, but only by 3 points.
Now it would be all up to the Speed Cards! This has been Scott's strongest point, being the first USA Mental Athlete to memorize the entire deck, much less in under the 5 minutes allowed. In last year's event, Shin only scored 20 cards and Mykie 24.
The last event would prove to be a record setter. Richard Rubin won the event by memorizing an entire deck of cards in 3 minutes and 37 seconds, besting Scott's record of 4 minutes 27 seconds. But Scott wouldn't let go easily. He, too, beat his previous record but in 3 minutes and 55 seconds, placing him second in the event. Shin took third, memorizing 30 cards in 5 minutes.
By the end of the day, Scott Hagwood was relieved to maintain his title with 1466 points. Scott is a chemical engineer from North Carolina who considers himself of "very average intelligence". After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer several years ago, Scott was concerned about the effects of aggressive treatment on his mental faculties. While undergoing several days of intensive radiation in isolation, he practiced some of Tony Buzan's memory techniques he read about in Use Your Perfect Memory. The results speak for themselves. Scott maintains the national title as well as the USA record for Names and Faces by scoring 111 points in 2001. We are also happy to report that Scott has been in remission for several years.
Shin Fukuda, a senior at the Bergen County Academies in New Jersey, placed second in the overall competition with 1246 points. The Bronze Medal was awarded to Mykie Pidor, a Freshman at New York University.
Among the Mental Athletes were five high school students from the Bergen County Academies in New Jersey. In 1999 Tony Dottino, President of DCG and Founder of the USA Memory Championship, was invited to the school to teach students some memory techniques to assist them with their studies. He told them, "Consider your brain just like any other muscle in your body...the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And unlike other muscles, it gets better with age." The students quickly caught on to the techniques and decided to compete. Two of them, Eric Chang and Coral Parmar were Silver and Bronze Medallists respectively in the 1999 U.S. competition and went on to place second and ninth out of thirty in the World Memory Championships that year.
