FMS MATHCOUNTS team grabs 2nd place
Ten Farragut Middle School students competed in Knoxville Chapter of Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers MATHCOUNTS competition Saturday, Feb. 25, bringing home a second-place finish for its team of four and a third-place overall finish for Joshua Lin.
Joshua joined teammates Hayden Ashby, Ethan Hu, Raymond Jin, Hayle Kim, Paul Kronzer, Daniel Lee, Seungwon Noh, Ridhima Singh and Alex Tan. The students are a mix of sixth, seventh and eighth graders, said Rachel Brown, a math teacher and MATHCOUNTS coach.
Daniel, Joshua, Alex and Paul joined up for the team competition and won second place, competing with 40 other students who came from five schools, at the John D. Tickle Engineering Building on The University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus.
Joshua won third place overall individually, which qualified him to compete in the state competition Saturday, March 18, in Nashville, Mary Sue Pruitt, a MATHCOUNTS coach and FMS math teacher, said.
“Today was really fun,” Joshua, a seventh-grader, said. “I enjoyed the competitive spirit. I enjoyed the individual competition the most, and I will practice much more for state.”
“Our teachers sent out videos to review,” Hayden said. “We practiced every afternoon on Monday and Wednesday since September.”
However, just prior to Saturday’s competition, “I’m really, really really nervous,” Ridhima said while waiting to begin.
“I’m a little nervous,” Hayden said. “I just hope our team does well so it will go to the next round.”
“I think I feel excited but nervous at the same time,” Seungwon said.
“If feel nervous, but I’m kind of confident,” Ethan said. “I noticed there are a lot of smart kinds out there.”
The competition had both written and oral rounds.
