Aside from occasionally indulging in video games and watching their favorite TV shows, the country’s young mathematics wizards — three from elementary and three from high school — are not forgetting that diligent preparation and hard work are what’s needed to win top prizes, as they showed at recently concluded nationwide math competition.
"PlayStation, television and guitar," said Emerson Escolar, 16, a fourth-year graduating student of the Grace Christian High School in Quezon City, when asked to list his main leisure time activities this summer.
Escolar — along with Galvin Lester Dy, 16; and Abegail Ceralde, 16 — were the senior high school students interviewed by reporters last Saturday night after the 2006 Metrobank-MTAP-DepEd Math Challenge held at the Metrobank Plaza Auditorium, Makati City.
Escolar and his schoolmate and teammate, Dy, garnered first place in the Fourth Year Team Competition. Escolar also topped the Fourth Year Individual Competition.
Dy and Ceralde said they also play PlayStation and other computer games as well as watch television during their spare time. "Hindi pa naman kami weird (We’re still not weird)!" Ceralde told reporters in confirming that they are, indeed, still like most teens.
Dy also plays "Sudoku," which he describes as a "pen and paper mind and numbers game."
Ceralde, who comes from Zamboanga Chong Hua High School in Zamboanga City, won second place in the Fourth Year Individual Competition.
Despite looking tired after completing the math challenge that began in the morning and ended early evening, the three soft-spoken high school champions were still eager to answer questions.
Escolar, who has two sisters, aged 4 and 12, admitted he felt tired but "everything was worth the effort." He added, though, that he’s glad it’s over.
"It is a challenge," said Escolar as he advised fellow students to "strive to do our best" in every competition.
Ceralde, on the other hand, reminded fellow students to study not just to get high grades.
"Don’t study just for the grades. Study for knowledge," she said. She has two brothers, aged 24 and 26.
The three shared their plans and dreams, including what they would want to be after college.
Escolar, whose parents are engaged in business, plans to study business management and follow in their footsteps.
According to Dy, he also wants to go into a business venture just like his parents.
Ceralde hopes to be a doctor someday.
As for the three grade six graduating students, they were quite not so serious about their answers to reporters’ questions.
During the interview, they cracked jokes to the delight of reporters. They seemed playful amidst the serious concentration needed to slug it out with other math wizards from around the country.
Kennard Ong Sychingping and Aldric Cristoval Reyes, both of Chiang Kai Shek College in Manila; and Andrew James Tan Lee, of St. Jude Catholic School in Manila, said they love playing computer games like PlayStation, too.
Among the three, it is only Sychingping who has a PlayStation at home.
Asked about their summer plans, the three young kids gave only one answer — play, play and more play.
Before the start of the interview, the three kids asked that no tape recorders or cameras be used. They also jokingly told reporters not to write down their answers to questions.
Jennifer Candelario, the coach of Sychingping and Reyes, said the three kids were quite conscious of being in the limelight. She disclosed that they had earlier suffered a bad experience during a television interview.
She said the three, who probably had stage fright during the interview after the Metrobank Math Challenge in Makati, were laughing and joking to overcome that fear.
Despite the jokes, Candelario related that the three kids are serious about their studies since they have to maintain high grades. She said they really worked hard to prepare for the competition.
Sychingping, together with schoolmate and teammate Reyes, won first place in the Grade 6 Team Competition.
Lee was first placer in the Grade 6 Individual Competition.
When asked what subjects they hated or loved the most, the kids said they love math and science, but hate Araling Panlipunan.
They said they hated the subject since "your head will explode."
Indeed the Grade 6 and Fourth Year High School winners nationwide were able to prove their love for math.
They bested a total of 397,723 elementary and high school students from 18,505 public and private schools nationwide in the grueling math challenge.