ISHMAEL N. DARO
News Writer

By the time this article is published, 17-year-old Amy Konecnik could have $100,000 to her name thanks to the wonders of text messaging.

Konecnik is currently in grade 12 at Saskatoon high school E.D. Feehan. In June 2009 she competed in the LG Canadian Texting Championships in Toronto and came in second place. Although she finished typing the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards faster than anyone else, she made two mistakes that cost her the $25,000 prize money.

Now Konecnik has a shot at four times that amount in New York City between Jan. 13 and 15.

She does not seem all that excited, however. When called for an interview she seemed hesitant to speak about the competition. She only agreed to the interview when she was assured that it was for The Sheaf and not a larger news outlet.

“So it’s only going to be in the U of S?” she asked hesitantly. “Okay, because I’m on like 600 websites and I don’t enjoy that too much.”

Konecnik entered the Toronto competition and was surprised that she did as well as she did because, as she puts it, “I didn’t think I was a fast texter because when I’m with my friends, they text just as fast as I do.”

Konecnik said she was surprised at the crowds that had shown up for the texting competition in Toronto.
“I was like, ”˜No one’s gonna watch people text. How boring.’ ”

The excessive media coverage she has received has been confusing, she said, and her enthusiasm for interviews and the competition itself has waned. In fact, she said despite the potential prize money she was not getting herself too excited.

“It’s just a fun trip. I do not take it seriously at all,” she said.

Konecnik also complained that LG, the company running the whole texting competition, had given her a phone that was unavailable in Canada until March and she had no way of activating it and actually practicing on it.

Although she undoubtedly wants to win the $100,000 prize money — mostly to replace her 1997 Chevrolet Lumina — Konecnik said she will be happy when the whole affair is over. She admitted that she didn’t like crowds “and the whole threat on the airplane, that’s not good either because now I’m scared to go on the airplane.”

It is perhaps more telling of the news media and its fascination with text messaging than of the actual merits of a phone company-sponsored competition that has led to the amount of interest.

Still, Konecnik seems to recognize the silliness of it all and she has dealt with the scrutiny from newspapers and friends alike with great aplomb, deciding to simply wait out the storm and return to her life afterward. At the very least, she has dealt with the scrutiny better than some.

“My boyfriend’s kind of freaking out,” Konecnik said, “but that’s okay. He can just shut up.”

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photo: Robby Davis