Valley team wins math contest Area group led by Lehigh University professor tops 90 others nationwide.
By Bill Tattersall Of The Morning Call
A group of high school students from the Lehigh Valley became national
champs at the American Regions Mathematics League contest held Saturday
at Penn State University.
The contest is held simultaneously at the University of Iowa and San
Jose State University, and the Lehigh Valley team came in first out of
91 teams nationwide.
The previous best performance for the
Lehigh Valley team, which has competed in the contest for 13 years, was
last year when it came in 10th.
''We knew going in we were
going to be in the top 10,'' team member Shiyang Cao said. ''We have
been practicing hard and knew we got better.''
The other top
teams were Chicago A and Phillips Exeter Red of New Hampshire, the most
selective teams from their respective areas..
The contest has
four parts, three of which involve teamwork. On the individual part,
Parkland High School's Ameya Velingker was among 15 students in the
country who correctly answered at least seven of eight questions.
The Lehigh Valley team consisted of students in ninth through 12th grade from the following high schools:
From Emmaus, Piotr Fidkowski and Adam Hallowell; Parkland, Velingker
and Cao; Freedom, Vincent Roscioli and Zachary Pierpoint; Moravian
Academy, Ranjan Rohatgi; Unionville, Chester County, Jason Trigg and
Shaunak Kishore; Hazleton Area, Maria Monks; Radnor, Delaware County,
Dan Schwartz; West Chester Henderson, Jason Bland and Jarey Wang;
Methacton in Norristown, Daniel Huang; and Voorhees in New Jersey, Chad
Nathanson.
The last eight students don't live in the Lehigh
Valley, but traveled to the practices at Lehigh University led by math
professor Don Davis, who has coached the team since 1993.
The
Philadelphia area team was not able to field 15 members this year, so
Davis opened the Lehigh Valley team to any student from that area
willing to practice at Lehigh.
As a result, this year Davis
sent two teams to the contest. The students named the teams Fire and
Ice. Fire is the team that won, and Ice placed 46th.
The Lehigh Valley team was sponsored by the university, Keystone Consulting Engineers and the students' schools.
The contest has four parts, three of which involve teamwork.
