With almost 100 students from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District competing, Willem Strydom of Homer Middle School was the overall top scorer in last Friday’s ninth annual Kenai Peninsula Middle School Math Meet.
The meet was held at Homer Middle School, with participating students from Aurora Borealis Charter, Chapman, Homer Middle, K-Beach Elementary, Kenai Middle, Nikiski Middle, Nikolaevsk, West Homer Elementary and Connections.
Taking over as coordinator was HMS teacher Rand Seaton. He replaced Suzanne Haines, one of the event’s co-founders. The Math Meet is a joint collaboration between the Homer Middle School and the Kachemak Bay Campus, Kenai Peninsula College-University of Alaska Anchorage, and is structured on the national mathematics enrichment program called MathCounts.
Two area schools, Homer Middle and Kenai Middle, are regular participants in the national program and also attend the district MathCounts Meet in Anchorage each year. This year’s HMS team placed second in the state meet.
The local, or district, Math Meet provides a fun, competitive venue for area students to participate in an academically challenging contest without the added costs of traveling all the way to Anchorage.  As one student said, after the meet was over, “It is so nice to be rewarded for being smart,”


Results from Friday’s meet:
• The top 12 competitors going to the Countdown Round were
Homer Middle School students Douglas Dean, Willem Strydom, Ben Kettle, Denver Waclawski, Tim Blakely and Koby Etzwiler; as well as Justin Anderson,
Quinn Lucas, Ryan Hill, Matthew Torkelson, Mayzie Rae Potton and Tehya Naylor;

• Matthew Torkelson, Aurora Borealis, won the Countdown Round;

• Willem Strydom, HMS, won the Sprint Round;

• Quinn Lucas, Aurora Borealis, won the Target Round;
• Top Team was comprised of Ryan Hill, K-Beach; Quinn Lucas, Aurora Borealis; Dakota Harris, HMS; and Noah Fisk, West Homer Elementary School;

• Willem Strydom was the overall top scorer.