St. Thomas More Student in Top 10 at Mathcounts

Nicholas Carolan, an eighth grade student at in Salisbury Township, took seventh place in the Lehigh Valley Mathcounts regional competition. The school placed fourth overall. Students from also participated.

The 28th annual event, which attracted 280 middle school competitors from five counties, was held at Trexler Middle School on Saturday, Feb. 4.

The top four winners will move onto state level competitions March 23 and 24 in Harrisburg  as part of the National Society of Professional Engineers' "Olympics of Math" national competition: 

• First place: Yogeshwar Velingker, Orefield Middle School, seventh grade.
• Second place: Clair Tang, Springhouse Middle School, eighth grade.
• Third place: Katie Xue, Eyer Middle School, eighth grade.
• Fourth place: Julie Costacurta, Moravian Academy, eighth grade.

For the second year, Springhouse Middle School was the top-ranking team out of the 33 schools that participated in the regional competition organized by Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers.

The top four Pennsylvania students will vie for national honors in May in Orlando, Fla.

Nearly 6,000 schools nationwide participate in the competition, which is co-sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a host of industries that consider excelling in math as prestigious as participation in sports.

In the regional competition, East Penn School District's Eyer Middle School was the second-highest ranking team, Moravian Academy placed third, St. Thomas More placed fourth, Southern Lehigh Middle School placed fifth and Orefield Middle School placed sixth. St Michael the Archangel was named the "most improved."

Students spent the morning in a series of tests that featured questions such as:

• The product of three consecutive odd integers is 9,177. What is the sum of these three integers? (63)
• Draw a pentagon with each of its five diagonals. How many triangles are contained in the figure? (35)

In the afternoon, the top 10 ranking individuals paired in a "Jeopardy"-like stage competition to determine final ranking.

In addition to the top four, the top individual finishers were:

• Fifth place: Daniel Tartaglione, Pocono Mountain East Junior High School.
• Sixth place: Sameer Lai, Eyer Middle School.
• Seventh place: Nicholas Carolan, St. Thomas More.
• Eighth place: Jacob Miller, Springhouse Middle School.
• Ninth place: Kristina Shum, Springhouse Middle School.
• 10th place: Lucy Zhang, Southern Lehigh Middle School.