Edgewood Middle School students have done it again.
During the Anthony Wayne Mathcounts Chapter Competition Saturday at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, the Warsaw Community School Corp. middle school picked up several awards.
Edgewood was the only school from this chapter to qualify a team for state in each of the last three years.
"I thought they did very well," said Edgewood co-coach Noel Howett. "We competed really well and we had some outstanding results."
The Edgewood team came in second by 0.5 points to Canterbury. The team of Louis Bolduc, Grant Carlson, James Wynn and Robert White also qualified to go on to the state contest at Rose Hulman, Terre Haute, in March. Only the top two teams advance.
Bolduc also was the first-place individual in the competition and qualified for state. Only the top four individuals qualify.
"It was pretty hard," said Bolduc of the competition.
Upon finding out he was the first-place individual winner, Bolduc said, "I was kind of surprised actually. I didn't think I did that good."
Bolduc said he's always been pretty good at math, but he's still "kind of" nervous about competing at state.
Bryce Carter placed eighth overall and was runner-up in the Countdown Round. First place qualifies for state. Carter was competing in Edgewood's fifth spot and barely missed automatic qualification.
Edgewood's second team of Carter, Noah Williams, Hannah Kline and Nathan Palladino was only four points behind Canterbury's first team.
Edgewood co-coach Lorinda Kline said the school took 15 students. In Mathcounts, a school pays for four or eight students to participate. The most officially a school can have compete is eight students. However, unofficially, Edgewood had seven more than the maximum to allow students to gain experience.
"It's kind of stressful," said Howett of the Mathcounts competition. Students have a limited amount of time to solve a set of problems, and many of the problems are word problems. After competition, Howett said, parents often come up to them and say how surprised they are at how tough the competition is.
Howett said he and Kline are always checking the other schools' scores during competition. Being his first year as a coach, Howett said he was very anxious for the kids.
