May 23 update: Endeavour's fourth grade team of Kyle Reese, Matthew Shang, Daniel Weng, and Alex Zhang finished in first place at the May 19 statewide Math is Cool Masters—Elite Division! They proved that Math really is very Cool!
In February, "Mathletes" from Beaver Lake and Pine Lake middle schools participated in MathCounts—a rigorous competition that consists of two individual tests and a team round. The top ten individual competitors faced off in an intense head-to-head Countdown Round in front of a live audience. Some district teams went on to compete at the state MathCounts contest in March.
In April, teams from Beaver Lake, Pacific Cascade, and Pine Lake and Cascade Ridge, Clark, and Endeavour elementary schools showed their number prowess at two state-level competitions in April, Math is Cool on April 20 and the Washington State Math Championship in Blaine on April 28. Competing against the sharpest math minds in Washington, including teams from private and gifted programs, the Issaquah School District students demonstrated amazing teamwork and finely-tuned math skills.
The results
Beaver Lake (MathCounts and Math Championship)
- Beaver Lake's MathCounts team finished in the top ten, earning 6th place in the chapter competition. Eighth grader Caleb Mok went on to the March 24 state MathCounts contest where he placed 15 of nearly 150 individual competitors.
- Beaver Lake brought the largest contingent to the Math Championship with 32 students competing on eight teams. Every Beaver Lake math teacher was represented at the competition by at least one student. Sixteen sixth graders placed in the top 40% in the individual tests and the four teams placed 23, 33, 37, and 55 out of 89 sixth grade teams from around the state. Twelve seventh graders placed in the top 30% on the individual tests and the three teams placed 15, 16 and 27 out of 80 teams. The eighth grade team finished in 10th place and the team members individually placed in the top 25 %. Eighth graders Caleb Mok and Lisa Tang placed 4th and 11th, respectively.
Pacific Cascade (Math Championship)
- Pacific Cascade sent one enthusiastic seventh-grade Lynx team who competed very successfully and made their school proud.
Pine Lake (MathCounts and Math Championship)
- After achieving a perfect score on MathCounts' individual tests and facing down his opponents in the nerve-wracking Countdown Round, eighth grader Gordon Lee finished the day in third place. In addition, the eighth grade team of Kevin Chen, Gordon Lee, Meryl Seah, and Alex Tsai scored 100% on the team competition, which, along with their outstanding individual performances, earned them a 3rd place trophy and the right to advance to the state MathCounts competition on March 24th. Those state results? Pine Lake earned a seventh place and Gordon Lee placed an amazing tenth place in the individual contest.
- Two teams from each grade level competed at the Math Championships in Blaine with several top 20 finishes. Individually, eighth-grader Gordon Lee won second place out of 167 competitors. His score tied the first place winner's and a tie-breaking question determined the final standings. Sixth-grader Alex Fu won 3rd place overall out of 349 competitors. Of Pine Lake's eight sixth graders, four placed in the top 10%: Alex Fu, Amartya Ranganathan, Manan Ghandi, and Christopher Tang.
Cascade Ridge (Math Championship)
- Cascade Ridge sent three teams to the Math Championship: Deven Chatterjee, Susheel Cheeti, Sean Mirahsani, Sean Steck, Chloe Chow, Naomi O’Neil, Divya Mahesh, Amandeep Bedi, Sean Broderick, Shaun Thomas, Ajay Pai, and Christopher Moroney worked hard to prepare for the statewide contest!
Clark (Math Championship)
- Clark's four teams did a great job at Math Championships this year—their first year attending the rigorous competition!
Endeavour (Math is Cool and Math Championship)
- One fourth grade and one fifth grade team attended the Math is Cool regional contest on April 20 along with 79 other fourth grade teams and 108 fifth grade teams from the Seattle region. Endeavour's fourth grade team placed second and qualified for the statewide Masters competition Elite Division in Moses Lake on May 19. The fifth grade team qualified for Division 1 of the May 19 Masters competition.
- Five Endeavour teams competed traveled to Blaine for the Math Championship and one brought home a trophy for a tenth-place finish. Two of the five teams were Endeavour fourth graders who wanted so much to participate (though there is no competition for fourth grade) that they spent weekends learning the difficult materials and competed as fifth graders. Adam Dong won a 10th place trophy in the individual tests out of more than 300 competitors.