The Indonesian Physics Olympiad Team (TOFI) was neither started in Jakarta nor in any place in Indonesia, but at the college of William and Mary, Virginia USA in 1992. Yohanes Surya and Agus Ananda, both were physics graduate students at the college took the initiative to invite a team from Indonesia to participate in the 24th International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) that would be hosted at the college. Prof. Hans Von Bayer, the Olympiad coordinator kindly allowed us to participate. We also received kin assistance from the Department of Physics of the University of Indonesia, our alma mater in Jakarta to conduct a long distance selection process. About 75 students took part in the qualifying examination and mostly came from Java, the main island in Indonesia.
We managed to get the best five students and invited them to Williamsburg, Virginia two months earlier to have an intensive training program and to get acquainted with academic environment in US. Due to lack of sponsors, some of themn had to pay their own tickets to US. Agus Ananda and Yohanes Surya tutored them voluntarily and shared their meal every day to minimize the cost. The students stayed together in a nearby apartment and came over to our apartment or to campus to have their training sessions. It seemed to be a formidable task at the first time but we were convinced that this would be a very rewarding experience. Two hundreds top students from 41 countries took part in the 1993 olympiad and we were proud with our students as they worked real hard and attempted solving many physics problems beyond what were expected from them.
On weekends, we had some recreational activities like playing tennis, basketball, fishing in the nearby Virginia Beach or taking a short weekend trip along the beautiful Blue Ridge mountain. The students were having fun that helped to relieve the stress of mental activities throughout the preceding week. Even though we did not have a chance to train them in the experimental part, the result was quite impressive to us for our first attempt. We managed to get a bronze medal (Oki Gunawan) and an honorable mention (Jemmy Widjaja). Russia came out as the best team by obtaining 3 gold and 2 silver medals.
The result has encouraged us to continue this work as we developed passion in the physics education. Some sponsors have shown interest to give financial support. However in 25th IPhO in China, we didn't get anything, as it was well known that the Olympiad problems that year were particularly tough. China, Great Brittain and Germany were the only countries that came out with gold medal. After the Olympiad, we realized that to have a good team we should undertaket a serious and well managed preparation. Therefore after getting his Ph.D. Yohanes Surya decided to return to Indonesia.
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