HMS mathletes take seventh place in southcentral Alaska competition

February 18, 2016 9:46 am
The Homer Middle School Math Meet team poses with their coach, Rand Seaton, at the MathCounts Competition in Anchorage. From left to right, front, are Lawrence Dunn and Parker Lowney; back row, Seaton, Jonathan Raymond, Marina Carroll, Ruby Allen, Katlyn Vogl, Emmet Wilkinson and Ben Coble, behind Emmet.-Photo provided
The Homer Middle School Math Meet team poses with their coach, Rand Seaton, at the MathCounts Competition in Anchorage. From left to right, front, are Lawrence Dunn and Parker Lowney; back row, Seaton, Jonathan Raymond, Marina Carroll, Ruby Allen, Katlyn Vogl, Emmet Wilkinson and Ben Coble, behind Emmet.-Photo provided

Homer Middle School Mathletes competed in the MathCounts chapter meet Feb. 13. Eighth graders Jonathan Raymond, Marina Carroll, Ruby Allen and seventh grader Larry Dunn played on the official HMS team and took seventh place in the team round. Marina Carroll and Larry Dunn led the Homer team with the best individual scores. 

The unofficial team consisted of seventh graders Parker Lowney, Ben Coble, Katlyn Vogl and Emmet Wilkinson.

All HMS students placed rank 50 or above.

“All the Homer kids have been working really hard to prepare for the competition. We’ve been preparing for this for months with students getting pulled out of class every Friday, doing extra work at lunch, and even taking a packet home to study,” said HMS Math Meets coach Rand Seaton. “The competition was pretty stiff this year, but I am very proud of how our students performed this weekend.”

The meet consisted of four rounds: a sprint round where students have 40 minutes to solve 30 problems without the use of a calculator, a target round where students are asked to solve five pairs of problems and have six minutes for each pair, a team round where groups of four work together to solve ten problems in 20 minutes, and a countdown round where the top individuals go head to head in a game show style competition. 

Thirteen schools from around Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and the Valley competed at the meet.