Students face off in regional Mathcounts competition
As his daughter hunched over a table and raced to solve math problems more quickly than her opponent, Ming Song knew it would be easy to make a mistake with a tricky question.
But Angela Song, 12, did her father proud – and followed in her sister Shulie’s footsteps — when she took first place Saturday at the regional Mathcounts competition at Colorado College. The annual mathematics contest for middle school students drew teams from 15 schools, with about 100 students participating. The event is sponsored by the Pikes Peak chapter of Professionals Engineers of Colorado.
The students spent the morning solving problems individually and in teams, and the 10 individuals with the highest scores faced off in a timed contest. Angela, a sixth-grader at Mountain Ridge Middle School, was tops in both the written and oral competitions, and her team placed second in the group competition.
She attributed her success to her father, a research engineer and former professor in China and Germany.
“Usually every Wednesday and Friday we work on problems,” Angela said, estimating that she spends an hour or two on those evenings working on mathematics with her dad.
Although she conceded that she sometimes complains about it, on Saturday it all seemed worthwhile.
“I’m really joyful that my time has paid off,” she said.
As the top contestant, she was the last to take the stage in the face-off but had to get three correct answers to win. She got the first round before the proctor finished reading the problem. But she missed a couple of problems, as did most of the nerve-wracked contestants.
A couple of other contenders had to do many more problems as they knocked off others in early rounds. Sebastian Rowe from Edison Junior High knocked out two opponents before being eliminated in his third round, moving from sixth to fourth place.
Angela won a $200 Best Buy gift certificate and she is among 20 area students who advance to the state Mathcounts contest in March.
Although she loves math, Angela isn’t sure yet of her career path.
“I might want to be an engineer like my dad, or a might do something in music,” she said, noting that she plays piano and the alto saxophone. “Or a professor. I actually have a lot of ideas about careers.”
MATHCOUNTS WINNERS
TOP TEAMS
First: Holmes Middle School — Kyle Allison, Derek Gorthy, Kristen Hernandez, Adam Hayes-Lemmon
Second: Mountain Ridge Middle School — Angela Song, SiSi Peng, Reece Cantwell and Forest Kunkel
TOP INDIVIDUALS
First: Angela Song, Mountain Ridge
Second: Ben Schneiderman, Timberview Middle School
Third: Kyle Allison, Holmes
Fourth: Sebastian Rowe, Edison
Other finalists who will advance to state competition:
Tom Niu and Kurt Kondracki, Timberview; Laura Brubaker and Stephen Bahr, The Classical Academy; Sydney Anderson, Edison; Jacob Carson and Miles Christian, West Middle School; Kyle Shiller, Mountain Ridge; Joseph Nunez, Cheyenne Mountain Junior High, and Samson Rao, Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy.
Winner of the Ben Crammer Award for all-round personal excellence was Shelby Gammill, Woodland Park Middle School.
