A team of students from Greenbelt Middle School (GMS) made it to the top 10 of the Potomac Chapter Mathcounts Competition, receiving honorable mention. The team was the only Prince George’s County Public Schools team to receive that honor.
Sixth grader Daniel Yuan ranked fourth in the individual competition and will advance to the state competition. Yuan defeated all top students from Montgomery County schools in the countdown round and ranked first in the individual countdown competition.
Team members included Alexander Swisdak, William Huang, Meegane Konchou, Daniel Yuan and Chinedum Chike. Assisting the team as coaches were GMS teachers Dr. Santosh Gupta and Myrna Natividad, independent math teacher Catherine Asaro and Shuai Yuan, parent of Daniel Yuan. Shuai Yuan and Natividad stepped in to work with the team when the former coach stepped down due to illness. “While other teams had months of preparation, our team of just three sixth graders had only a few weeks, and added two strong seventh-graders less than 10 days before the competition,” said Coach Yuan.
“The team competition result is beyond my imagination, considering all of our students are from sixth and seventh grades and we were competing mostly with eighth graders from Montgomery County,” he said.
Mathcounts is one of the largest nationwide middle school mathematics competitions. The competition has four levels: school, chapter, state and national. A chapter level competition usually covers middle schools from multiple counties. The Potomac Chapter competition includes middle schools in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. According to Coach Yuan, this competition is considered one of the toughest chapter competitions. The Maryland team was ranked second in the national competition last year, and all four students in the Maryland team are from the Potomac Chapter.
Photos by Shuai Yuan