Thirty-six Morgan Hill students competed in the MATHCOUNTS Chapter Competition Feb. 6 at San Benancio High School in Salinas with 10 of them advancing to the state championships.
Sixth graders Antarish Rautela and Neil Shah came in first and second place, respectively, in the Chapter Competition, while the top two school teams came from Morgan Hill as well.
Neil Shah, Claire Huang, Issabella Romo and Astin LeQuang competed on the first-place team from Silicon Valley Flex Academy. The team from Charter School of Morgan Hill, comprised of Antarish Rautela, Kristof Sochan, Liam Morgan and Katie Lang, finished a close second. All eight of these students have been invited to compete at the state level, where they will be joined by Dean Tran and Abhas Rajhans from Oakwood Country School.
MATHCOUNTS is a National Middle School coaching and competitive mathematics program that promotes mathematics achievement through a series of fun and engaging contests. There were about 100 students competing in the Monterey Bay Chapter this year.
Several students also competed in the Countdown Round. The top 12 students at the Chapter Competition competed in this Jeopardy-style, head-to-head contest where two students competed to answer math questions the fastest. Neil Shah brought home the first-place trophy and Antarish Rautela brought home the second-place prize.
Approximately 40,000 middle school students in grades 6-8 from all over the U.S. and its territories compete every year in the chapter competitions. The highest scoring students move on to the state competition. The Northern California State Competition will be at Stanford March 5.
Students from Britton, Martin Murphy, Oakwood, Silicon Valley Flex Academy, Charter School of Morgan Hill and Jackson Academy of Math and Music have been training since September in an after-school program run by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) in cooperation with the Morgan Hill Unified School District.
For more information on AIM’s free after-school math enrichment program, go to morganhillmath.org.
