Newton South High School students – Elena Baskakova, Steven Hu, Aaron Lu, Isaac Gordon, Alexander Loo, Shelley Wei, David Shaar, and Sophie Song – organized and ran the School Mathcounts Competition at Oak Hill Middle School. The event was held on January 11 and attracted over 30 students! It was a fun event consisting of both individual and cooperative rounds, which generated a lot of energy and excitement among the participants. For many of them it was their first competition experience where they had to collaborate with their teammates on solving math problems. The high school students proctored the competition, did live grading, and gave out awards. Congratulations to all students who participated in the event and, especially, to Noah Kim, Jared Mi, Vedant Kulkarni and Sophia Yan, who had the top four scores.

Most of the students who ran the school competition also run the Oak Hill Mathcounts Club, putting together weekly practices and taking middle school kids to local math competitions. The club provides a great opportunity for middle school students to learn and practice topics outside the typical school curriculum, and for the high and middle school students to get to know each other better, establish connections, and make new friends.

The school competition is the first in a series of Mathcounts competitions that includes Chapter, State and National level competitions. In the next few weeks, coaches will finalize the list of students who will participate in the Mathcounts Chapter. The competition will be held online on February 17.