Area students put math skills to the test

Photo

Neighbors | Pam Jadue.Students from St. Joseph and Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Austintown competed in the YSU Math Counts competition at YSU. Pictured are students AnnaMaria Jadue, Jena Styka, Wesley Pringle and Anny Carroll. Carroll was recognized for finishing in the top 31.

By PAM JADUE

neighbors@vindy.com

Area middle school students participated in the regional Mathcounts competition on Monday at Youngstown State University in hopes of earning the honor of representing our area in the state competition in Columbus.

The competition has been hosted by the Mahoning Valley Society of Professional engineers for more than 25 years to promote an interest in math and science. This year’s event brought together 140 students from schools across the valley and was sponsored by Dominion East Ohio.

According to John Ritter, Mathcounts coordinator, the top three teams from the YSU Mathcounts competition will represent the area in the state competition in Columbus along with the top three individuals.

Other winners in the day’s competition would be recognized at a banquet in March.

“We try to make it special for the coaches and the students. We must be doing something right because there are teams that have returned for more than 25 years,” said Ritter.

The organizers of the competition hope to encourage additional schools to participate in next year’s event.

Terry Bishop of Dominion East Ohio encouraged the participants to enjoy the day saying, “This is an important event to us because we need engineers in the future. This is our way of promoting a passion for math and science in the schools.”

Teachers and volunteer coaches worked with math students in their respective schools to prepare for the competition that allows the strongest math students to compete in both team and individual contests.

Debbie Haverstock, a math coach and teacher at Canfield Village Middle School said, “I have been bringing a team here for 20 years. We have been preparing since October for this competition meeting after school.”

James DeToro, who teaches at W.S. Guy School, feels that the contest provides many benefits to the schools who participate, and the students, including his own children who had participated with the Austintown team in the past.

“The students feel special and get excited about math.” Also, he remarked, “This is an opportunity for the teachers. Many of us have formed friendships through this event. Over the years, those friendships allow us to collaborate and network with other math teachers.”

When asked how the competition was going after the first round, Austintown Middle School students Lynnette Seebacher and Lindsay Pauline expressed that they were enjoying the day but that the problems were difficult, especially in the Sprint Round where the short amount of time given for each problem added to the challenge.

The Poland Middle School team earned the honors of attending the state competition and also had team member Sonny Lipari rank as the top individual. Andrew Rossi of Holy Family in Poland also earned a top individual honor along with Sang Park of Boardman Center.