Bears shine in speedskating, trampoline

Many Bears excel athletically in sports not played within the white rocks. Teerit “T.J.” Vongkovit ’15 is one of them.

Vongkovit spent two weeks in November at the International Skating Union (ISU) World Cup Speed Skating Championships, held in Torino, Italy, and Kolomna, Russia, where he faced off against significantly older, more seasoned skaters, including overall short track World Champion Sin Da-Woon and three-time Olympic gold medalist Viktor Ahn.

While skating against such top-notch adversaries may sound daunting, Vongkovit — whose performances in Torino and Kolomna left him just shy of qualifying for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics — takes it all in stride. “It’s pretty normal to me,” he said, “since I haven’t really experienced anything else.”

What Vongkovit has experienced over his nine years of speed skating is an arduous training regimen that involves honing the technically demanding skills of passing, blocking and conserving energy: “We usually concentrate on a single discipline [like] sprints, long distance training, or medium distance training for each day of the week.”

Vongkovit takes great pleasure in his sport despite its under-the-radar status, and he welcomes more company from his fellow Bears. “It would be great if some people from Landon started speed skating,” he said.

Another Upper School student, Ryan Curto ’14, shines in the world of trampoline and tumbling, a branch of gymnastics that consists of a number of mini events. A typical practice or competition will involve events on a single large trampoline, two smaller trampolines and power tumbling, which involves a large specialty track area.

Curto has competed in five national championships, plus national meets in Daytona, Florida, and Frisco, Texas, where he has twice finished fifth place overall and once finished third.

“It was pretty difficult to do a sport outside of Landon for the first two years in high school, but in the past two years, I’ve managed to work out an exemption from one season of [Landon] sports,” Curto said. “It is a bit difficult to do a sport that no one knows because they might not know the difficulty of what I am doing.”

Nick Barbot ’19 competed as a speed skater on the same team as Vongkovit and as a trampoline and tumbling gymnast on Curto’s team; he even accomplished the impressive feat of winning a trampoline and tumbling gold medal at the Junior Olympics! In addition to his achievements alongside Vongkovit and Curto, Barbot is a highly accomplished snowboarder and holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Jonathan Haskin ’14 provided reporting for this story.