Parkland 7th Grader Takes First in Mathcounts

For the second year in a row, , a seventh grade student at , took first place in the Lehigh Valley Mathcounts regional competition.

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

Velingker also placed first as a sixth grader last year, according to a prepared release frpm Mathcounts. He will be eligible to compete again in 2013 as an eighth grader.

Velingker and the three other top winners will move onto state level competitions as part of the National Society of Professional Engineers' "Olympics of Math" national competition: 

• Second place, Clair Tang, eighth grader at .
• Third place, Katie Xue, eighth grader at Eyer Middle School.
• Fourth place, Julie Costacurta, a Moravian Academy eighth grader.

Also 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 team is coached by Kevin Halliman.  

The Springhouse team will join the top four finishers at the state competition at the Sheraton Harrisburg Hershey Hotel on March 23 and 24. The top four Pennsylvania students will go on to Orlando, FL in May to vie for national honors.

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 see the value of making math excellence as challenging and prestigious as participation in sports.

In the regional competition, East Penn School District's Eyer Middle School, coached by Julie Hummell, was the second highest ranking team and Moravian Academy, coached by Alison Overdorf and Dani Mackavage, placed third.

Other high-ranking teams were: St Thomas More, fourth; Southern Lehigh Middle School, fifth, and Orefield Middle School, sixth. St Michael the Archangel was named the "most improved."

Competing 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)

Tests were graded and ranked immediately.

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 finishers, the additional top finishers were

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