NEWS                                                                                    Walnut Valley Unified School District

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                             880 S. Lemon Avenue

March 11, 2013                                                                    Walnut, CA 91789

Contact:       

Kelli Gile, Office of Community Resources

(909) 595-1261 ext. 31204

Students Qualify for State Contest

WALNUT, CA--Walnut Valley Unified School District middle schools from took top honors at the East San Gabriel Valley Chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition at California Polytechnic University, Pomona.

WVUSD teams brought home three of the four top awards from the contest held on February 22 and 23.

The Chaparral Middle School team won 1st Place, Suzanne Middle School took 3rd Place honors, and South Pointe Middle School brought home the 4th Place award.

The top ranked Chaparral team includes Benjamin Chen, William He, Matthew Ho, Jasmine Xu, Rajvir Dua, Frank Jiang, Brian Li, and Brian Chang. The students were coached by teacher/advisors Denise Loera and Tommy Pak.

Benjamin Chen won 1st Place Individual and 2nd Place in the Countdown Round

The 1st Place team advanced to the California State Competition at University of California at Irvine on March 9.

Suzanne Middle School 8th grader Mike Bao also advanced as an individual to the State Competition. He is coached by teacher and advisor Amy Erickson.

“I am extremely proud of our mathletes. This is the youngest team we have ever sent and they out performed expectations with grace and dignity under pressure,” Erickson said.

South Pointe Middle School won the 4th Place team award and a 6th grader received a 6th Place individual award. The team is coached by teacher Gary Dresser.

These middle school students will be competing to advance to the National Competition in May.

Suzanne’s Aaron Chang won 4th place award in the afternoon Countdown Round. This contest is an unofficial part of the MATHCOUNTS competition because it does not determine whether students advance to the state competition. But, it is the most exciting part of the contest. Students go head-to-head (utilizing the sports bracket) in a match up with answers given orally for the top 16 students from the morning rounds.

They have 45 seconds to answer problems such as “Two similar right triangles have an area of 6 square units and 54 square units. The length of the hypotenuse of the smaller triangle is 5 units. What is the length, in units, of the hypotenuse of the larger triangle?”

Many of the mathletes are able to do the calculations mentally without paper and pencil, and at times respond to the questions will the Master of Ceremonies is still reading the question.

A special thanks to two WVUSD alumni for their help at this year’s competition: currently on the UC Faculty – Dr. Charleston Chiang, UCLA Post-Doc in Biology and his wife Dr. Vivian U-Chiang, UC-Riverside Post-Doc in Astronomy.

Chaparral 8th grader Benjamin Chen, with advisor Tommy Pak, proudly shows off trophies after the MATHCOUNTS regional competition.  

Chaparral student Benjamin Chen, shown with coaches, won 1st Place Individual and 2nd Place in the Countdown Round. 

Suzanne Countdown Round Competitors: Eugene Lo holding Mike Bao’s trophy. Mike was at the Science Olympiad competition and could compete in the Countdown Round; 7th grader Christopher Wong holding his 7th place trophy; and 6th grader Aaron Chang holding his 4th place Countdown Round award. Shown with coach Amy Erickson.

The Suzanne Middle School 2013 MATHCOUNTS team with advisor Amy Erickson. 

Chaparral Middle School team members and advisors during the MATHCOUNTS awards presentation.