N/A - Texas Dallas/FW National Center - Mathematics Pentathlon

2012 NATIONAL MATHEMATICS PENTATHLON ® 2012 NATIONAL MATHEMATICS PENTATHLON ACADEMIC TOURNAMENT
® ACADEMIC TOURNAMENT
Where Strategic Thinking Counts
The Kori (Griffin) Steigerwald Story
I would like to introduce Kori Steigerwald to you. After Dr. Gilfeather
and I completed a Volunteer Officials Session (VOS) in Rochester, Michigan
on February 27th of this year, Kori came up to let me know that she
had been a past Pentathlete in 1984! Wow! She got my attention with
that. When I asked what school she had been attending at the time, I
was told Robey Elementary in Indianapolis, Indiana. But that is not all,
she related to me that she had won all her games at that tournament
and was in our Hall of Fame! Over the ensuing years the gold medal
she had received had been misplaced. After I got home from the VOS,
I looked her up in our Hall of Fame winners list which goes back to
1979 when we started the National Tournaments. In 1984 her name
was Kori Griffin. She and three other boys in fourth grade had acheived
Gold and Hall of Fame in our new center which had just opened in Indianapolis.
The first tournament threre was held in Hinkle Fieldhouse
at Butler University. This was where the Milan High School, an underdog
basketball team from a tiny Indiana town, made it all the way to
the state championship tournament in 1954. Hoosiers was a movie
about the “Hickory Huskers” loosely based on the events surrounding
this acheivement. Some parts of the movies were being filmed at Butler
during 1984 and 1985. These scenes in the movie about the 1954
state tournament were taken at the Hinkle Fieldhouse right there on
the same floor where Kori achieved her National Award 30 years later.
She came back in 1985 and struck gold again! This time she won four
games and tied one for a 14 point gold medal. During that year another
movie was being made about visiting the past. I thought that it would
be a nice way to frame this story because 28 years later, Kori came
back with her second grade son to the Michigan-Ohio Center where he
won a bronze medal! And yes, we found another gold medal for Kori.
2012 MATHEMATICS PENTATHLON ® 2012 MATHEMATICS PENTATHLON
THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL NATIONAL TOURNAMENT
® THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL NATIONAL TOURNAMENT