about us

Tiffany | Victoria | Ian | Kyle | Tate | Romauld | Ngoc | Mr. Pedro

Tiffany

Score! Hurray! Sports are fun! We are all exhilarated by spectators and athletes alike. Unfortunately, more than 477,500 soccer-related injuries are treated each year in doctor’s offices, clinics, and hospitals!. In the US, whether you know it or not, it impacts our economy, and our lifestyle.  Some people's lives just revolve around sports. A lot of people just play sports for recreation, to exercise, or to keep healthy. Others do it to compete, to win. Exercise increases our brain activities and increase our good cholesterol. With all these good things, we should play more sports, but safely.

"No pain, no gain." How many times have you heard this phrase from a trainer, coach, or teammate? In fact, this simple phrase can cause more damage than help. It can cause you to go beyond your limits. It can cause your team to lose in the long run. It can cause permanent damage to your  body. Injuries could vary from a minor sprain, to a broken bone, to a muscle tear, or to a serious concussion that can cause memory loss and brain damage, and to paralysis. Don't work through the pain. Tell your coach, rest, get checked up. It's better to be safe than sorry. If a baseball hits your head, chest, finger, leg, etc... go get checked. Don't continue playing. This is exactly what we want people to learn from our website, the "no pain, no gain" slogan is not right. The "better to be safe than sorry" is right. Always take precautions, never take  that risks. 

Coaches, trainers, athletes, and parents should be educated on the common injuries of sports they involve in. You are never too old to learn. Do not be a know-it-all (everyone is sometime in their life), take some classes. As a coach, never put pressure on your athletes to go beyond their limits, acquire solid knowledge of proper coaching technique, preseason screening, post injury evaluation and your sport mechanics that could cause injury; enforce mandatory warm up, stretch, strength training, and conditioning program and always take extra safety precautions. As the athlete, you should start all those trainings to get your body ready for the sport you want to play, always wear proper protective gear, never let the pressure to win to push yourself or others beyond their limits. It's your body; you're responsible for it!  And everyone should know basic first aid and CPR.  It could save a life.

With our website, our overall goal was to teach everyone about all these things and more... We provided detailed information on many injuries, trying to cater to many sports (18 exactly!). But, at the same time, we tried to make it fun so that kids wouldn't get bored and so that they would actually learn instead of just looking over it. To do this, we used comics, unique writing, information, and interviews.

About Me

Hi! My name is Tiffany.  I live in the US.
Doing Thinkquest is just like exploring a new world, a whole new place of information, of experience, of manner. Going from seismic sea waves to a mosquito's proboscis (ugh) to sports. It's quite a span.

Any topic can be done in Thinkquest. There are things from Broadway musicals to fatal diseases to disasters. I use Thinkquest websites to research for my homework often. There are thousands of websites to explore, each with their own flair.
But, apart from Thinkquest, I do many other things. I'm a sixth grade student. I absolutely love to read. I read about one book a day (actually an hour, but I can't always take more than one book out).
I really don't have a favorite subject. All my teachers make all the subjects very interesting. My science teacher is my favorite teacher, aside from my teachers from language arts, math, social studies, art, french, technology, band, music....

Music has always been a great joy of mine. It is very relaxing and keeps my brain active. I am trying to avoid the "no-brain" state because I still have a lot of work to do. Ngoc, my coach, taught me about the stages of "brain activity". After long hours of writing, drawing, or web design, I go to the piano and practice. Then I go back to my computer. After a few more hours, I go practice my flute. As I work, I sing to music on my computer! My latest recital pieces are, "Think of Me", "Whistle Down the Wind" both by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and "Long Time Ago" by Aaron Copland. My favorite sport is ballet, which I dance at Boston Ballet school 3 times a week.  I also like to swim and play tennis.

After Thinkquest competition, I'll be doing a lot of math with the John Hopkins University CTY program. Maybe one day I will become a brilliant mathematician like Ngoc! I also plan to dedicate more time for my music, and write a myth and fantasy book.  Aside from that, I also like to cook, look at stars, and eat seafood and all the fruits.

This summer, I plan to visit Hong Kong and Thailand to see my grandparents and to eat a lot of Thai food. It's very exciting. I am also going to see Tate!

Collaboration

This year, was truly truly harder. I wanted to learn something new. It was challenging; it was frustrating; it was enjoyable; it was irritable; it was .... Thinkquest. Thinkquest is exactly what it's name is, a quest to think. This year, I did the web design, graphics, some interviews, interactive games, half of the common injuries writing. However, all my other teammates did just as much.
Tate did such a great job with the translations. Tate had a very difficult time with the technical words until he found Dr. Wanchai Sirisereewan and Dr. Chantana Wannasathit to help him understand all those medical terms to him. Imagine, having to translate about 100 pages of writing into a totally different language. I just think that is amazing what he has done. As the writers wrote, I sent to him right away bit by bit via email.  I also put all the writing on the internet where everybody can check the progress.  Except I forgot to put mine on so Victoria had done extra! Sorry! Victoria always helped me pick up everything at the end.  In a team you need someone like that….although I heard every time I called she rolled her eyes!  I know, no one wanted to hear from me.  Imagine having to write those hundred pages. How much hard work Victoria went through is just plain scary.
I only gave them ideas. Ian and Victoria joint-wrote the comics. All I told Ian, was that I wanted comics about different sports injuries. Look what he came up with! They're all so funny and educational. Similarly with Victoria, I only asked her to write from the brain, bone, and muscles' points of view. Look how well that turned out. They did the same for the remaining half of the common injuries writing. Ian wrote the introduction and Victoria wrote the injury, prevention, and treatment parts. They gave me their best.  When I didn’t like some of what I wrote, Ian took over and rewrote them for me.  Or when Ian got tired of the comics, Victoria would come in and picked some up Using their script, I created storyboards.

Then I created final drafts for all 18 sports, scanned them in, colored it, rearranged it, put text in, and voila! There's your finished product, all 18 of them.

Kyle came in to help us at the end when we lost one of our writers. He has done multiple outstanding interviews, gathered vast amounts of pictures, and gathered very valuable information on the top ten injuries from Dr. Lance Macey.  He also made all the quizzes and I animated it.
This is how we work together. Using all of our strengths we made a great team. Although we didn't always get along. Actually, most of the time, no, all the time, we didn't agree. Or after the long work hours we also might have intentionally annoyed each other (I didn't do anything I plead innocence! Innocence!). Then we fought untill someone went home in a really sour mood or crying...
The only part I don’t like is the follow up part…maybe.. sometimes I do. 

One time I surprised Ian at his concert!  My brother performed in the orchestra that day.  I found out that he went to the same music school as me and when his rehearsal times were!  Kyle and I go to the same school and we are also in the same jazz band and concert band.  That made it convenient to keep track of our work.  Summer was the most fun time because as we met we swam and kayaked.  We worked, we played, we exhausted and then, of course, we fought!

Ngoc is our assistant coach. My older brother, Andrew, did some projects with Ngoc. That's how I know of her high level of intelligence and hard work. She has been with us from the start, guiding us, showing us the way , and critiquing us. She was putting up with me and my endless emails. While she travels across continents, my emails follow her...

Do you know how hard it is to find a coach?!?  Finally, two months before the deadline, I managed to recruit Mr. Pedro, my school principal, to help us out.  In spite of his extra curricular activities, he spared time for us. Final step, all the writing was sent to Mr. Pedro to be approved and he then sent them back to me.

Web design

I had waited to create the website. I wanted to see how long their writing would be so that I could "proportionalize" the website. In the end, I just made a box that you could scroll in. It made it much easier. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I created a first draft. It was plain and unsatisfactory. I made another one. This one was much better. But, this draft still needed improvement. It is the version you see now on the website.

From the very beginning, we had planned to make most of my drawings "manga" style since Ngoc and I both like manga. This reflected in the buttons you see for the comics and the comics themselves. You can see bigger versions of the characters in the buttons in our photogallery. I finally finished drawing all the characters.

I had a hard time trying to make the website fit for different browsers (They were not very cooperative!). Trying to decide and stay with the whole color scheme was also challenging. It's very hard to make changes when there's about a hundred pages! I had to redo the website many many times.
I had a very difficult time showing all the pictures and making the icons clearly visible. The icons also had to fit the space without using a scroll bar. I will try again, but if you don't see it happen that means that our upcoming snowstorms (we have have two snowstorms this week) put the Internet or the electricity out. Or, I might not have finished the games and ran out of time.

The dreadful words - "time management"... Dum dum duumm.... Aaaahhhhh!!!!! If I survive this, I shall become an expert in "work discipline", another dreadful word. My brother likes to mention how it kept him capable of a huge work load and many of extracurricular activities (sports, music, and clubs) at Andover. I want to go there someday too!  Or, maybe, Exeter, where my other brother will be at.

Thinkquest created a competition to help people learn about different things, not only for the people who create the websites, but also for the people who browse their websites. All Thinkquest entries are posted in the Thinkquest Library for all to use. I often think of Thinkquest as a building kit. Thinkquest provides everything you need, but it's up to you to build the structure. As members of teams split and form new teams, it's like building on to the structure, making it bigger and better each time.

Thank you's and Acknowledgements

Lastly, (I'm sorry this is so long) I'd like to thank a few people. First of all, I'd like to thank our interviewees, Dr. Lance Macey, Dr. Jeffrey Rind, Mrs. Nancy Grimes, Mr. Tim Sage, and Mrs. Doreen Weiser for allowing us to interview them.  I’d like to thank Mr. Pedro for working with me and always supporting me all through my school year.

Also, I'd like to thank Ngoc Tran for her leadership and for putting up with all my frustration and endless emails since summer.

Thank you to Ms. Kilmova, Dr. Wanchai Sirisereewan, Dr. Chantana Wannasathit, and Mrs. Walaiporn in Thailand   

I'd like to thank all of my teammates, Ian, Victoria, Romuald, Kyle, and Tate, for being patient, bearing with me, not getting too impatient or aggravated, and for giving me support and reason for me to go with this.
I'd  like to thank my brother, William, for trying to teach me html and succeeding(I think I finally got it! Although, I had to bribe him with hugs at school. That’s is very embarrassing!.). I want to thank my brother, Andrew, for helping me research, get a sitemap together, provide work flow charts, and helping me assign work. I'd like to thank my dad for providing computers, software, and books.

Words of wisdom from a certain family member of mine whose slogan was not only "no pain, no gain", but also "no fear", regardless of age, regrets it now, and now says: Prevention and strengthening is  imperative!
She suffered numerous injuries. Oftentimes, in our house, we hear, "Ouch! Owwwww! Ouch! Ouch! Owww!" Consequently she is no longer able to play the sports she loves.

I hope you all enjoy and learn something from our website!

Victoria

Hi, I’m Victoria and I’m 12 years old. There are many things I like to do. I enjoy swimming, playing field hockey and swimming some more. My family fosters cats and kitten for the MSPCA.  Sometimes I have to have them sleep in my room as they get lonely.  I feed them, clean them, and teach them how to play.  Then after 9 weeks they go back to the shelter to be adopted.  We have 4 cats that we own. My favorite subject in school is math.  I like math because it is straightforward (most of the time) and you either get it right or wrong.   Currently I live in NH.  When I grow up I would like to be a lawyer.

I think my goal in this team was to learn more about how to treat sports injuries as we are interested in medicine and science in my family.   Our team goal was to educate people about the risks they  take and how to reduce them when they  play a certain sports.   Also to make sure people will practice the sport correctly.   In this project I was mostly interested in how the body reactions to certain trauma. In my team my job was the writer.  My role in the team was to about injuries and some comics!  Usually my team got along well but when we disagreed with each other we often had to take things slow and discuss the problem. That was interesting to  listen to other people’s point of view and learn to respect their opinions.When we were having a meeting we learned a lot about each other.  Like who likes what and who doesn’t like other stuff. 

Thinkquest takes a lot of time.  I squeezed Thinkquest into my busy schedule.  It came between hanging with friends and dinner. One of the most difficulties parts of Thinkquest was writing everyday.  I won’t lie, I got lazy a couple times but in the end I swallowed it up and wrote it. My favorite part about this project was the time my team got to spend together.  I disliked writing the comics.  They were hard to write. I learned a lot from this project.  I mostly learned about sports injuries though. This project was both fun and boring.  Writing gets boring after awhile.  But after you look at the final results it inspires me to write more. I think Thinkquest was fun.  I myself had my own sports injury.  Well it is sort of like a sports injury.  You see I was playing twister and I tickled someone and they fell on me.  They fell on my fingers and broke one of them.  It gave me whole new view on sports injuries and how a seemingly safe game can turn into a painful one.

Overall I really enjoyed the Thinkquest experience.  Even if we don’t win I have learnt a lot about myself, my abilities and how to work in a team.  Thank you Mom and Thinkquest.

 

Ian

Hello. I am Ian. I live in New Hampshire. I like to play the cello, do karate, play video games, and eat peas and muffins. When I grow up, I would like to become either a rocket scientist or an energy scientist, because science and math are my favorite subjects.

The goal of my team was to create a working sports injuries web site, though my personal goal was to make this a fun and learning experience. Last year, my friend's sister Victoria (from the Tiny But Dangerous entry) won 3rd place. This inspired me to get into the Thinkquest cycle. Though I did not create the topic, I am interested in this project because I do not play almost any sports, and now I know a lot about them.

My role in this team was one of the writers. I wrote almost all the comics and almost all the introductions (I have entered a writing contest every year for 4 years, and I have won every time). It took me a long time to collaborate with the rest of the team because until very recently, I was the only boy, and let's face it: when you're in 5th grade working with only girls, it's not #1 on your list of favorite things to do. But eventually, after chatting on the forum for a long time, it didn't really make a difference on my gender. I was happy when Tate, Kyle, and Romuald joined, even though I have not met them.

I disagreed with a whole lot of things often, but I take a nap or play a video game, and I forget about being mad. I learned from my teammates what it really is like to create a website. One of the hardest challenges of this project was managing my time. Every night when I THOUGHT I finished because I had done homework, practiced my cello, practiced my saxophone, finished going anywhere, I would settle down to a Nintendo game, until my mom would say, "Ian, how's it going with your Thinkquest work? Have you replied to Tiffany's e-mail?" Ughhh... Tiffany can always find work for me to do! Of course, some of the sports were fun to do, such as soccer and karate, but some were KILLERS, such as cricket! I usually do 1-2 of my assignments every night, every other night, or every few nights. I liked that I got to create a web site; it's been my dream. However, the thing I hated the most about the project was that it took out a major chunk of my time. More than once, I considered resigning myself. However, I kept going steady, and it has rewarded me greatly.

I learned a lot from this project, such as all about sports. If I took a sports quiz 8 months ago, I probably would get from an F to a C+. Today, I would get from a B to an A+! I have had fun doing this project so far. It is sort of fun writing humorous comics, and descriptive and exciting introductions. Yes, I have had some fun.

What I like about Thinkquest is the range of different topics. It is interesting how many different web sites have won Thinkquest, with subjects such as minerals, mosquitoes, artificial intelligence, and even chickens! It is cool how there are so many different topics. When I have a homework assignment, I sometimes look to Thinkquest for research.

Lastly, thank you Thinkquest VERY MUCH FOR AN AWESOME CONTEST THAT ROCKS!!!!!! That's me, Ian.

Kyle

Hi! My name is Kyle. I'm 12 and in 7th grade. I have one younger brother. The role that I had in creating this website was to research the diagnoses and treatment of common sports injuries, and editing material related to those injuries. I had the opportunity to visit a physical therapist and orthopedic surgeon's office to help me learn about these injuries.

I love to read, play baseball, snow ski, water-ski, swim, bike, run, and scuba dive. I also play four instruments, and enjoy writing my own music. The trumpet, bass guitar, electric guitar, and the drums are the instruments I play. My favorite musician is Paul McCartney, who's been popular since the 60's. My favorite food is lobster.

The subjects I enjoy the most are math and science. I am an A student and hope to go to medical school some day.

 

I was asked to contribute to this site because of my interest in sports injuries, and my desire to become an orthopedic surgeon. I am very grateful to have been asked to join this team of smart and gifted kids. It has been a privilege to have learned about these injuries and I feel that I can now nearly make a diagnosis given an accurate history of the injury. Through my research, I have learned the importance of taking a history, and performing a physical examination, to predict a diagnosis.

I hope that you learn a lot from this website, and that you use this knowledge to help educate other kids about sports injuries.

Tate

My name is Nutcha. I was born in U.S.A. My father and my mother wanted me to grow up in our Thai culture and our Thai language so that is why we moved back to Thailand a few months after I had been born.

Now I am 11 years old. I am in grade 5 . My school’s name is Kasetsart University Laboratory School International Program. My favorite subjects are Science and PE. My favorite sport is soccer. My favorite hobbies are drawing and painting. I like to build things. One time I built a robot out of recycled plastic cups and used straws. I also made a huge rail out of recycled paper and straws for racing toy cars. It is a pity I did not take any picture of them.

There are three people in my family. There are my father, my mother and me. We are a very nice, warm family. I have a wonderful father. He is a very good model of father. He is a nice boss at work, and he really works hard. My father run his ownsoftware company in Thailland. That whyt I am so proud of my father and I like to follow my father's footstep in my future.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tiffany for giving me a chance to join the team and get to know Thinkquest. I really appreciated it. I have learned many things from this project, especially English. I am so proud of it.

In our team, we are assigned to do different tasks. My job was to translate the website into Thai. This is how I worked. I spent two days a week, and each time it took two hours. The process was done in 3 parts. First, Dr. Wanchai Sirisereewan explained anything bone related to me. Second, Dr. Chantana Wannasathit explained anything brain related to me. Last , I translated it and my aunt, Mrs. Walaiporn, explained other difficult vocabulary. Then, my mom sent the translation via email to Tiffany.

I really enjoyed doing this project. I learned what I was wondering about the bone and the brain. I also learned many new words about the body parts. I like the comic. It was fun! And I hope I would get a chance to join and work with the team again in the future.

Romuald

I came to the United States to join my mother who came years ago as  
refugee. When I first arrived, the main problem was the adjustment; it  
means the language, how to get to school, how to buy in stores, and the  
weather (snow). There was a war in the Congo Demrocratic Republic that  
lasted for almost for  10 years. The  country was attacked by  the   
neighbor  Rwanda  and  the fight was about the minerals, such as gold,  
diamonds, coltan. The  war  was  between  Congolese rebels and the  
countries Rwanda, Uganda  and  Burundi, it mean between nations. 
For now  the  fight  stopped  because  the  country  has  a  president 
who was elected democratically. 


My relatives have been hurt in the wars; especially ladies of the family 
who were killed or put in the ground alive in Makobola city. Others 
were wounded. I have my family here, in the US, but we still have 
relatives in  Congo, my brothers and sisters. I never visited Congo 
since I left. My  life in Congo was not good because everything became 
worse with the war.  There was no jobs for my parents, and it was hard 
to study in school too. The life here is very good, because I can study 
and the school is free.  Also the illnesses kills many people every day, 
especially kids. In the  Congo Democratic Republic there is one organized 
army because the government was proud to put everyone together to 
avoid problems. For the first time in forty years we have a democratic 
government, like in the  USA. 


In my country, schools don't look like here. First of all, only one teacher 
can be in the class and teach all subjects. Students wear uniforms to make  
difference with other people who are not students. Teachers in my 
country are stricter than here; they have to be respected everywhere. 
If a student  makes a mistake in the class, the teacher has a right to 
punish him, even to beat him (but not hurt). We have a lot of subjects - 
Geography,  Literature, History, Sciences, Technology, Language, Math, 
Music,  Gymnastics, Religion, etc. Schools don't have computers and 
gym equipment,  except the private schools, which are very expensive. 
The classroom is  just small rooms where you can find easily 50 to 60 
students.

The popular music in Congi is the Rhumba, Tango, Bolero, Jazz, and 
also the traditional music. We do have a national dance. We dance 
during big  events, for example the Christmas, the New Year, birthdays, 
marriages and  graduation days.    

In my country I used to eat all kinds of food, especially the cassava  
bread and leaves, potatoes, rice, meat, vegetables, chicken, fruit; and
 bananas. In my country my favorite food wasa beans and rice; here 
it's  pizza. 

I miss the culture of friendship with neighbors, the respect for 
adult  people, sharing food with other people during big events, walking 
the streets that are free of cars. I have friends here, but the friend I 
have here can;t share food with me and can't say hi to my parents. 
The biggest  challenge here is to speak perfect English, to have neighbors 
who can't  talk to you.

Ngoc Tran

Hello! My name is Ngoc, and I am the Assistant Coach. I'm 18 this year, participated ThinkQuest twice, one in 2005 (with Coffee: All Ground Up); and one in 2006 (with eDivide: Information Inequality). I first met Tiffany at ThinkQuest Live in 2005, and she invited me to help out with her team this cycle. 

Every ThinkQuest cycle is always a new learning experience for me. This is the first time for me to be an assistant coach, and it turned out to be a great pleasure and honor.  The team always surprised me by their creativity, originality, dedication, and their sense of humour. I communicated to the team mainly via Tiffany. She did most of the team coordination, and reminded me to do my job. :) She is truly the glue that held all of us together.

About myself: I am from Vietnam, living in Australia at the moment. I will finish my undergraduate degree in Mathematics this July. Career-wise, my dream is to make contributions to mathematics theory. One of my biggest hobbies is sports: I am a regular player of soccer, table tennis, badminton, rowing, swimming, jujutsu and taekwondo. Before doing the website, I often ... skip warming up, being so anxious to join the game. This happened almost every Monday morning for my swimming class – and, predictably, I frequently got cramps in the last laps. Now after reading the website, I try to force myself to stretch properly.

I would like to thank my excellent team-mates: Tiffany, Victoria, Ian, Romuald, Tate, Kyle, and our coach Mr. Pedro. I would also like to thank my friends for helping me in the hunt for sports photos and sports equipments. I would like to say a big THANKS to ThinkQuest – for the ingenious idea of this competition. I have been saying this every year – but I think it is expressing gratitude is never enough.

And finally – THANK YOU, our visitors! Hope you have enjoyed our website! 

Mr. Ron Pedro, Primary Coach