This isn't surprising given that T9 is predictive and a typing contest would probably not coincide with your typical typing habits, though I am very skeptical that typing by pressing successive numbers on a number pad is faster than T9 for general texting purposes, at least after you've trained it. Perhaps I'm underestimating the speed of which these people could press buttons in succession, just it seems like depending on the word you're pressing significantly more buttons to type the same thing.