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William Ellis Middle School’s MathCounts team took first place in the recent regional MathCounts competition.
Approximately 150 of the top middle school students from several counties in northwest North Carolina competed in the annual event at Wake Forest University.
The team’s performance qualified it for the state competition at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham.
William Ellis had 10 students. Aaron Clodfelter, Brayden Fuchs, Nirat Patel, and Ian Rareshide competed as the school team and as individuals, while Anthony Acosta, Daniela George Perez, William Hendrix, Alex Hirata, Lily Tronsen, and Will Weaver competed as individuals.
In the individual results, Clodfelter placed second, Rareshide third, and Patel fourth.
The team, coached by William Ellis math teacher Steve Rareshide, began practicing weekly after school in October, and several times weekly in January and February.
MathCounts is a national program designed to improve mathematical problem solving skills among middle school students, who are at a crucial stage in developing and sustaining math interest and ability.
As one of the longest-running STEM programs for middle school students in the nation, MathCounts encourages student interest in mathematics through written and oral challenges. Topics include algebra, geometry, number theory, patterns, and probability.
In North Carolina, MathCounts is sponsored by the Professional Engineers of N.C., which organizes the event for public and private middle schools. The top teams from the regional events advance to the state competition, and the state winners participate in the national finals.
“This has been a wonderful group of kids to coach,” Rareshide said. “They work well together and were willing to practice hard for this event. We were able to defeat archrival Hanes [Magnet Middle School in Winston-Salem] for the second year in a row. They usually set the bar in our region.”
A sample problem from the non-calculator round of this year’s contest: “How many ordered triples of odd positive integers (a, b, c) are there for which a + b + c = 49 and a < b < c?” Answer: 44.