The Sunnyvale Sun

Cover Story

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Made It: Keira 'Kiki' Pinkney runs to hug a teacher after receiving her diploma from Fremont High School.

Movin' On

Graduates begin journey to adulthood

By Mike Barnhart

Fremont and Homestead high schools honored their outstanding senior student-athletes during athletic award ceremonies recently.

At Fremont, Ruel "RJ" Rivera, an all-league performer and the team's Most Valuable Player in football, as well as a member of the track and field team, was named the Outstanding Senior Male Athlete. Samantha Ellis, who earned team and league MVP honors in water polo and softball, was recognized as Outstanding Senior Female Athlete.

At Homestead, Ryan Dedrick, Tim Vanderet and Nicole Caballero all received the school's highest athletic honor, the Mustang Award, which is given annually to the school's top senior male and female athletes.

Dedrick was an all-league performer in volleyball and basketball in each of the last two seasons. Vanderet also was a two-sport standout, earning all-league recognition in football and basketball. Caballero was a top player for four seasons on the field hockey and girls soccer teams.

Boys considered for the Mustang Award and recognized as athletic booster honorees were Kevin Labadie, Brian Labadie, Shamir Ross, Eric Taubman, Alex Jones, Brian Armstrong, Derrick Lee, Alex Romanko, Rishi Agrawal, Matt Power and Morgan Quail.

Girls considered for the Mustang Award and recognized as athletic booster honorees were Michelle De Caro, Chelsea Maniscalco, Lauren Gniadek, Kelly Verstegen, Emily Pool, Emily Critchfield, Jennifer Garnett, Samantha Lee, Michelle Grabau and Kate Mower.

Other Homestead athletic honors: Roger Edwards Memorial Award (volleyball)--Kelly Verstegen, Dale Park; U.S. Marine Corps Distinguished Athlete--Emily Pool, Matt Power; U.S. Army Reserve National Scholar Athlete--Jennifer Garnett, Jon Da Silva.

Fremont's athletic honors night included recognition of the outstanding male and female athletes of each class and Most Valuable Player award winners of each varsity team. Fremont also recognized 81 scholar athletes, students who earned a grade point average of 3.5 or higher this school year.

Joining Ellis and Rivera as Outstanding Athletes of the Year were juniors Samantha Jennings and Daniel Moctezuma, sophomores Bianca Lopez and Robert Ramirez and freshmen Justine "J.T." Wozniak and Richard Ramirez. Fremont honored girls water polo coach Steve Puccinelli as Coach of the Year.

Fremont MVPs: football--RJ Rivera; volleyball--Nadra Son, Alicia Tikalsky; cross country--Elijah Carrillo, Elizabeth Cortez; tennis--Ben Vernon, Kim Hoang; water polo--Moctezuma, Ellis; basketball--Jeremy Allen, Carol Hoang; wrestling--Boris Novachkov; soccer--Jairo Magana, Isabelle Heye; baseball--Rob Ramer; softball--Ellis; swimming--Vladimir Kozyrev, Julia Chen; badminton--Bryant Luong, Susan Ma; golf--Scott Zhang; track and field--Ryan Staab, Brittany Van Schravendik.

Senior scholar athletes were Nichole Ballou, Michael Batryn, Julia Belaya, Bradley Bell, Alison Bushnell, Kara Doelling, Samantha Ellis, Brittney Geer, Isabelle Heye, Carol Hoang, Leo Janisse, Sam Kesten, Amee Lindsey, Kimlinda Luu, Susan Ma, Huy Phan, Kaitlin Rogers, Mark Scandalis, Ryan Staab, Alicia Tikalsky, George Tran, Hai Tran, Heather Veitch, Ben Vernon, Natasha VonSalza, Yijian Wang and Larry Wen.

Fremont graduate is adept at finding fast solutions

By Cody Kraatz

Timm[ie] Wong usually solves a Rubik's Cube in 20 seconds. Sometimes he does it as fast as 11 seconds, but that could just be luck.

The secret, Wong says, is in the finger tricks that speed cubers have to learn, making what would normally be two moves in one motion. He can even do it one-handed.

"It's all just muscle memory," says Wong, who recently graduated from Fremont High School. He has memorized hundreds of algorithms, or series of moves. Some steps take 21 and others take 57. It's just a matter of knowing instantly which algorithm to apply.

Rubik's Cubes are starting to get a lot of recognition, but Wong started his speed cubing efforts in 2004 after meeting a renowned cuber at a math competition. At that time, Wong was taking about one minute to solve.

"I didn't know about the whole existence of speed cubing until I saw that," says Wong. Unlocking the secret of the Rubik's Cube, and then unlocking it faster and faster, is just one example of Wong's drive to go above and beyond what is expected of him.

A 3.98 grade point average, selection as a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist, a 2200 on the SAT (out of 2400) and a post as drum major of the Fremont marching band made for a solid application to Stanford University, where he starts in the fall. He is planning to major in electrical engineering.

Despite all of his achievements, Wong is humble. "I'm not a big fan of getting all hyped up for those things. Life isn't about getting into college."

Wong is a big fan of training for math competitions, though. He breathed the life back into the school's math club and spent a lot of time learning formulas and tricks he can't learn in school.

"It's just fun solving problems. It's not really fun when you get stumped and can't do it, but it's always fun when you see how to solve it and it just clicks."

He took some math enrichment courses at Foothill College, but his preparation really involves looking at past problems and memorizing the formulas they required, building a repertoire of tricks. There is a social element as well.

"It's the same as sports," says Wong, acknowledging, however, that it would be awkward to strike up a conversation about math formulas. "That would be a little on the geeky side."

Wong found time for leadership as well, wearing the white gloves and leading the 86-member marching band in performances, as well as facing the weight of responsibility if a performance broke down.

"Band definitely sort of consumes your life. I was pretty much, as they called me, the man," says Wong, who plays piano, percussion, flute and piccolo. He was selected after being flute section leader last year.

"He's always been hard worker and so forth, but when you become drum major of a band you are kind of thrust into a plethora of responsibilities," says Joseph Kelly, director of Fremont's marching band. "He took it in stride and he really grew."

Kelly says the band had a lot of respect for Wong because he approached the position with a genuine passion for putting the heart back into the band.

As his own personal touch, Wong made a practice of taking a blade of grass from the Fremont field and dropping it on whatever field the band played, saying it was leaving a piece of Fremont there.

"For me that was pretty much my defining high school experience. It just changed something in me," says Wong.