Issaquah students score at Math Olympiad

On a recent Saturday in May, nearly sixty 5th through 8th grade students from six Eastside schools competed in Washington State's Math Olympiad at Issaquah Middle School.

Teams of students from Endeavour, Issaquah Valley, and Sunny Hills elementary schools joined five Issaquah Middle School teams on their home turf-solving problems in number sense, measurement, geometric sense, probability, statistics, and algebraic sense. Opstad Elementary (Snoqualmie School District) and Odle Middle School (Bellevue) also sent teams to the competition.

Here's a list of Issaquah students' spectacular results:

• Issaquah Middle School's five teams of 6th through 8th graders, coached by math teacher Kimiko Nishiwaki, earned three ribbons and 2 medals.
• Endeavour Elementary's team, coached by Ashwani Sirohi, received a ribbon for its performance on the open-ended problem, and a medal for their Session II score.
• Issaquah Valley Elementary's two teams, co-coached by 5th grade teachers Gary Arthur and Kim Lester, brought home three ribbons - and, according to Arthur, "lots of smiles!"
• Coach Irene Symmes of Sunny Hills was proud of her team's ribbon in Session II.

Students were not the only ones worthy of accolades that day. Kimiko Nishiwaki, coach of the award-winning Issaquah Middle School teams, organized the event. She graciously credits much of the Olympiad's success to supportive math teachers and efficient custodial staff at her school, but coach and teacher Gary Arthur sang Nishiwaki's praises when he called the well-planned event "simply the best organized Math Olympiad I have attended in the past ten years!"