William Allen Middle School MathCounts team members Charles Mitchell (left to right), Sandro Boujaoude, Alexander Tsai and Lillian Meehan, and co-coaches Heather Trapani and Tara Kortman are all smiles at the Ocean-Burlington Chapter Competition earlier this year.
Sandro Boujaoude, Lillian Meehan, Charles Mitchell, Alexandre Romero, Shalin Shah and Alexander Tsai of the William Allen Middle School (WAMS) MathCounts team are going to the New Jersey state competition on Saturday, March 9, after competing in the Ocean-Burlington Chapter Competition earlier this year.
“MathCounts is a middle-school national organization of kids who do math competitions, so the state of New Jersey is broken up into regions and each region holds a competition, and then the top finishers from the regions get to go to the state competition,” said co-coach Tara Kortman.
“We brought 12 kids with us to the competition, and we have one official team of four (Boujaoude, Meehan, Mitchell and Tsai),” she added. “And our official team of four came in first place overall, so those four kids will get to go to the state competition.”
In addition, there’s a countdown round in the chapter competition where the students participate in two tests – one with a calculator and one without – and their scores from both are averaged together. The top 10 students participating in those tests combined made the countdown round, as did eight WAMS students.
Shah placed first overall in the competition, Romero placed third, Meehan placed fourth, Mitchell was sixth, Tsai was seventh, Vedant Yadav placed eighth overall, Khushi Khurana was ninth and Aarya Pradhan came in 10th.
“The kids, when they were doing the countdown round, they were all really polite to each other and they were very gracious as they were doing it,” Kortman recounted. “They were very excited as they took their tests – they would run in at the end and compare answers and talk about the problems …
“They seem to be pretty cohesive,” she added. “They’re a good group of kids.”
This year’s state competition will be held at Monmouth University. Kortman looks forward to seeing the team’s experience.
“It’s just a really great opportunity,” she explained. “They get to go to (a) college, they get to see a college campus, they get to meet kids from all over the place that have really great math skills, just like they have really great math skills. And they just see a little bit of a bigger world than the world that we see in Moorestown.”
The MathCounts competition series has four levels: school, chapter, state and national. Each level of competition is composed of four rounds – sprint, target, team and countdown – according to the MathCounts website. Altogether the rounds are designed to take about three hours.
Boujaoude described participating in the chapter competition as “rewarding” for all involved, specifically when it came to teamwork.
“Sometimes we get, occasionally, just really challenging problems, and for the team itself, we get to collaborate (on) ideas, share ideas, solve it, and overall, it was just a really thrilling experience,” he noted.
Although the competition is challenging at times, it’s fun for Mitchell.
“It’s also a good experience,” he observed. “As Sandro said – “teamwork,” he said. “ … If someone doesn’t know how to (solve) a problem, they have to stop their pride from getting in the way of the team and allow the team to solve it, and everyone has to find a way to contribute.
“I was on the team last year,” Mitchell added, “and I noticed at all times someone has to be doing something, whether it’s checking a problem, doing a problem – something has to be getting done.”
Shah shared his initial reaction to placing first overall.
“It was pretty stressful and pretty shocking,” he recalled. “I was not expecting to be first … The whole competition was fun.”
As the state competition nears, Mitchell is excited to see himself and his teammates represent Moorestown.
“Do things with a purpose,” he related. “I think that’s one thing that changed from last year to this year, at least for me. I also think representing Moorestown, remembering that you’re representing Moorestown instead of doing it for yourself, that’s a pretty rewarding experience.”
