A math team from Lee Middle School traveled to the campus of the University of West Georgia recently for district MathCounts competitions and took 1st Place in the West Georgia Region.
Lee’s team, consisting of Math Club students Jenny Oh, Chris Raum, Laura Keuhl, Josh White, Minhyuk Kim, April Hong, Ben Lacina, Marlayna Cromedy, Bryan Shim and Joon Baek, represented the region at this year’s MathCounts State Level Competition, held March 17 on the Georgia Tech campus, said school system spokesman Dean Jackson.
Jackson said the 10-person Lee Math Team were among 110 “Mathelete” competitors at the West Georgia event and won against 11 teams from counties around the region, including teams from Coweta and Carroll counties.
Team members Jenny Oh and Chris Raum finished in the top 10 as individuals and competed in a countdown round competition. Jenny Oh took the top honor and finished as the First Place Individual in the West Georgia Region.
MathCounts competitions, founded and sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, is a national middle school math competition program promoting math excellence for 6th, 7th and 8th grade students.
Lee team members were drawn from Lee Middle School teacher Lynette Hanus’ Math Club and competed against 45 other Math Club members to attain their spots on the competition team, said Jackson.
Competitions consists of four parts: the Sprint, Target, Team and Countdown Rounds. The Sprint Round in an individual round comprised of 30 questions that students have 40 minutes to complete without the use of a calculator. The Target Round is an individual round of eight questions that require an deeper level of multi-dimensional problem solving, which are distributed a pair at a time. The Team Round has 10 problems for the team to solve within 20 minutes. The scores from the Sprint and Target rounds are used to determine the top 10 individuals who then proceed to the Countdown Round, in which students compete head-to-head, with buzzers, in front of the audience.
Of the 110 competitors at West Georgia, Jenny Oh had the top individual score on the Sprint and Target Rounds. Chris Raum finished with the 8th place score in these rounds and of our other competitors Laura Keuhl, Bryan Shim and Minhyuk Kim finished in the top 20. In the team round of the competition our Team only missed two questions to finish with the top score and top honors, said Jackson.
