Math Wiz from Orefield Defends His State Title

Orefield Middle School eighth-grader Yogeshwar Velingker successfully defended his Mathcounts state championship on March 23, taking home top honors in Pennsylvania's competiton held at the Sheraton Harrisburg-Hershey Hotel.

Velingker again earned the right to compete at the national level by winning the state championship versus 162 students who were high-scorers in 25 regional competitions.

Now, he'll be among the 224 final students from the 50 states, U.S. territories, State Department schools and Department of Defense school to compete in the 2013 Raytheon Mathcounts National Competition, scheduled for May 10 at the  Washington, D.C., Marriott.

The competition will be webcast on www.mathcounts.org.

In the Pennsylvania state final, Yogeshwar was the high scorer in the written round and then won the Countdown round, a Jeopardy-style faceoff.

To qualify, he took first place in the Lehigh Valley Mathcounts Regional Competition held at Trexler Middle School in Allentown.

As a sixth-grader in 2011, Yogeshwar had placed first in the Lehigh Valley competition. And as the 2012 winner of the regional contest, he went on to take first place at the state championship, winning the right to compete on the national level.

Mathcounts, known as the national “Olympics of Math,” is organized by the National Society of Professional Engineers in association with several other organizations.