The team of South Pasadena Middle School students Rebecca Tsaur, Julie Wu, Sam Ettinger, and Arie Wong placed second in the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of Mathcounts. Every private and public school was invited to the competitive event, which took place February 21 in Pico Rivera.
Huntington Middle School of San Marino captured the first place trophy, with Pasadena Polytechnic and La Canada placing third and fourth.
Both Huntington and South Pasadena advance to the California State Finals, to be held in mid-March at the University of California in Irvine. The top teams from throughout the state will compete for the prize of representing California at the National Finals in May in Chicago.
The competition consisted of three rounds. In the sprint round, the students must individually solve 30 questions in 40 minutes, without a calculator. In the target round, 8 challenging questions must be solved in 24 minutes. And in the final round, the team of four work together to solve 10 very difficult questions in 20 minutes.
Individually, Tsaur placed 3rd among all competitors, and Wu placed 4th.
Mathcounts is a national math competition sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers and Raytheon. Nearly 6,000 schools and 500,000 students participate across the nation.
