Huntington Beach’s Tsoneff Can Write His Own Ticket
You’re a 17-year-old male, holding a course catalogue from a prestigious East Coast university. You flip it open and skim through the list of classes.
Comic Imagination of the Middle Ages.
Pathogenesis of Human Retroviruses.
Genetics and Biochemistry of Prokaryotic Transposable Elements and Yeast Meiotic Chromose Metabolism . . .
Do you:
A. Decide a future in bean bag repair won’t be so bad after all.
B. Hack the catalogue into bits, mix in some Alpo and feed it to the pit bull down the street.
C. Tell your parents, “College is bogus. I’m going to Tibet.”
Face it. Some of us would need a dictionary to decipher a course list like that. Prokaryotic Transposable Elements? Didn’t they open for Pearl Jam last year?
But Steve Tsoneff looks through this catalogue and smiles. A big smile. A Cheshire Cat smile. A smile so bright it lights up the dark side of the moon. Tsoneff, you see, is an academic. He’s a straight-A kind of guy. The Harvard-bound senior at Huntington Beach High looks at knowledge and education the same way a big-wave bodysurfer looks at the Wedge on a 20-foot plus day. He just can’t wait to dive in and shred.
It’s the same way on the volleyball court, where Tsoneff is an outside hitter for the county’s third-ranked team. Oiler Coach Rocky Ciarelli calls Tsoneff the hardest working athlete he’s coached in years, the kind of kid who finishes practice looking like he was just fished from a fountain.
“Some kids come out and just kind of la-di-da around,” Ciarelli says. “Steve works hard every second.”
The fact that Tsoneff effectively mixes sports and school is not exactly unique. The majority of his teammates also happen to be “A” students. Besides, scholar-athletes have been around for centuries. Socrates--little known fact--shot a lifetime 92% from the free-throw line. As for Homer, well, he didn’t get his name by staying home and watching Oprah, you know.
But take a look at Tsoneff’s academic stats: a 4.54 cumulative grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale). An SAT score of 1,540 (1,600 is perfect). Awards, honors and scholastic citations from (fill in any of a couple-dozen academic organizations here).
He’s the co-editor of the school newspaper. He’s the co-editor of the school’s literary journal. Heck, he’s probably the co-editor of the Los Angeles Times. Come to think of it, why isn’t he writing this story?
Last summer, Tsoneff received a $1,600 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write an essay. Which topic did he choose? Life? Love? The pursuit of perfect high school party?
Try “The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe on Herman Melville, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.”
Nine weeks of work. Forty-six typewritten pages. A summer spent surrounded by books.
“It was great!” Tsoneff says. “I got paid for doing something I love.”
Now before you ship this kid to Nerdville, know that Tsoneff is in no way against fun and frivolity. Sure, his bookshelves contain some high-brow material--a 93-year-old printing of Poe poetry for instance--but they’re also stocked with stories by Stephen King and “The Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper,” of “Twin Peaks” fame. Tsoneff’s floor is covered with People magazine and old issues of Rolling Stone. There isn’t a computer anywhere in sight.
“It’s my main weakness,” he says. “I’m computer illiterate.”
Music? Tsoneff’s into it. Full blast, especially when he’s studying. His tastes are borderline alternative--from Morrissey to the Violent Femmes. Nerdy need not apply.
Tsoneff says he doesn’t get good grades for the sake of straight A’s. He says his parents never pressured him to achieve. He simply loves to learn, yearns to discover what he doesn’t yet know. Always has, always will.
Last Christmas, Tsoneff and his family vacationed in New Zealand. It was there that Tsoneff decided to throw himself off a cliff. He dived 143 feet into a river--and bounced back up into the air, thanks to the bungee cord tied to his ankles. For his Harvard entrance exam, Tsoneff wrote an essay comparing bungee jumping to starting a college education. Both involve a great deal of fear, he said.
But like the course catalogue, it hardly scares him away.
Barbie Ludovise’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Ludovise by writing her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, 92626 or by calling (714) 966-5847.