More than 70 middle school students from 12 Fort Wayne area schools participated at the Anthony Wayne Chapter MATHCOUNTS competition at IPFW recently.
But only the top 12 individual students and top three teams moved on to the state competition this Saturday at Purdue University, West Lafayette.Of those moving on, one team and three of the individuals on the team will represent Warsaw's Edgewood Middle School.
Edgewood's team of eighth-graders Tyler Ostrom, Joe Erickson and Lucille Rich and seventh-grader Alek Jansen placed third at the IPFW regionals to move on to state. Individually, Jansen placed fourth, Ostrom placed ninth and Rich placed 10th.
State competition begins at 9 a.m. Saturday. The top four "mathletes" and top coach will represent Indiana at the national competition May 8-11 in Denver, Colo.
MATHCOUNTS is a national math enrichment, coaching and competition program designed to improve math skills among U.S. students, according to information provided by Edgewood Math Club's advisor Lorinda Kline.
Wednesday afternoon, Rich said the competition has four different rounds.
The first round is the "Sprint," or individual, round. Contestants have to solve 30 math problems in 40 minutes, Rich said.
The second round, Rich said is the "Target" round. Contestants have four sets of two problems to solve within six minutes each.
The "Team" round is third, Jansen said. Teams have to solve 10 problems in 20 minutes and must work together.
"Countdown" round is last, Jansen said. Erickson said two people at a time face off. A math question is posed, and the first student to buzz in with the right answer wins the question.
Erickson said competition with be tight. "We hope to get to the top," he said, "but we just want to do good."
All four of the Edgewood students agreed they liked math, but didn't have a reason.
"I don't really have a good reason," said Rich, "I'm just good at it."
And that may be all it takes for Edgewood Middle School to win at state competition Saturday.
