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Eighty-seven middle and Intermediate students, grades 6-8, from across Buncombe County came together to compete in a local MathCounts competition this Friday, January 20.

MathCounts is a nationwide non-profit that aims to encourage Middle School students to foster a love of math and teaches them to embrace challenges while preparing them for expanded career and academic success, as per their website. The MathCounts competition is carried out with three sets of problems consisting of a “Sprint Round,” where students quickly answer questions without a calculator, a “Target Round,” where students answer multi-part word problems, and a “Team Round” where teams of 3-4 students answer complicated word problems as a group. All of the math problems presented are challenging to the students and non-routine - that’s why they are assigned a team sponsor at each school to help prepare them for the difficult math problems of the competition.

“While this event does provide a friendly competition ‘capstone’ - what matters most is that students experience non-routine, challenging math problems with their teammates and team sponsors all year long and have fun doing math,” said Stefanie Hill, BCS K-12 Math Specialist.

The first math competition for middle school since the pandemic, students were eager to put pencil to paper and work through the difficult problems once again.

Student winners from our BCS Competition include:

1st Place Individual Performance - Jack Anderson, 8th grader at Valley Springs Middle

2nd Place Individual Performance - Zane Nazarian, 8th grader at Cane Creek Middle

3rd Place Individual Performance - Ricardo Zuniga, 8th grader at Reynolds Middle School

Outstanding Performance from 6th Grade students include: Cadence McClure (CCMS) and Udhayveer Singh (ACRMS)

Outstanding Performance from 7th Grade students include: Liam Curtis (NBMS), Ryker Hollingsworth (CCMS), James Lunch (NBMS), Liam Robertson (Owen MS), Trey Stone (CCMS), Ruvim Trach (Erwin MS)

Outstanding Performance from 8th Grade students include: Myrissa Anderson (NBMS), Elijah Bartholomew (NBMS), Owen Ferguson (VSMS), Nathanael Groseclose (NBMS) Maggie Pulver (VSMS)

Team Winners

1st Place Team - North Buncombe Middle School (Members: Liam Curtis, Nathanael Groseclose, Myrissa Anderson, Mia Schmeltzer)

2nd Place Team - AC Reynolds Middle School (Udhayveer Singh, Sam Pass, Andrew Holmes)

3rd Place Team - Valley Springs Middle School (Jack Anderson, Owen Ferguson, Haram CHi, Benny Kirby)

BCS would also like to thank the team sponsors of each group, who were:

Sarah Swann and James Micheal Sapp from Owen Middle School

Amy Vaughn and Mikayla Wright from Erwin Middle School

Mary Thoreen from Enka Middle School

Trista Huffman from North Windy Ridge

Missy Smart from North Buncombe Middle School

Doug Massey, volunteer at North Windy Ridge and North Buncombe Middle School

Lee Ann Davis, Vimi McKeithan, Leigha Jordan from Valley Springs Middle School

Kim Altman from AC Reynolds Middle School

Clyde A. Erwin Middle

Clyde A. Erwin Middle

Clyde A. Erwin Middle

BCS Middle School Students do Math where it Counts with MathCounts