The tabulations are in, and Monongalia County has a new tier of Math Field Day winners, who will now advance to regional competition next month.
Students took on the numbers in the three-day competition last month, which was open to grades 4-12.
Here are the top winners in each of those grades:
Fourth grade: Rya Zinn, North Elementary; Anand Subramani, North Elementary; Colton Bonfili, Brookhaven Elementary.
Fifth grade: Gloria Hu, North Elementary; Aditya Jain, North Elementary; Conor Mays, Suncrest Elementary.
Sixth grade: Tessa Abildso, South Middle; Emily Liu, Suncrest Middle; Eliot Sorenson, Suncrest Middle.
Seventh grade: Ryan Karim, Caden Yao and Larry Du, all of Suncrest Middle.
Eighth grade: Sunny Guppi, Suncrest Middle; Coleman Guenther, Mountaineer Middle; Julia Watson, Mountaineer Middle.
Ninth grade: Austin Luo, Joyce Hu and Shankar Subramani, all of Morgantown High.
Tenth-12th grade: Lauren Shen, Amy Lu, Jonah Forinash, Carter Herron, Kenneth Wang, Grace Yan, Pearl Zhang and Brandon Ngo, Morgantown High; Andrew Kisner and Jacob Rohozen, University High.
Several competitors were also selected as alternates. Visit the Mon Schools website at https://boe.mono.k12.wv.us/ for the complete list.
They’ll test their numbers-mettle in the regional tournament, which is set for March 26 at University High.
WVU hosts the state Math Field Day event April 23 in Morgantown.
While the county competition was just that, it was also fun, Monica McCartney said.
Yes, really, the math coach for the local district said, with a chuckle.
Never mind going to blackboard with quivering knees to do long division when you were grade school, she said.
For the numbers expert who began her career in education as a classroom teacher, math isn’t a mystery – it’s a subject to be taught, like everything else in the course catalogue.
This particular subject so fun for her, she said, because it’s so logical and connected – emphasis on the latter.
If you want to see the world the way she does – that is, a person not intimidated one decimal point by math, get behind the wheel of your car.
With an old-school road atlas in the passenger seat to go with the GPS.
“The GPS is going to tell you, turn-by-turn, how to get where you’re going,” she said, “but at the end, you’re going to have no idea how you got there.”
That’s because you’re reflexively responding, she said, to what you’re being told to do.
“You’re still not going to know where you are.”
No so, she said, with that most 20th-century of navigational devices: the humble roadmap, with its squiggles and blue lines, sure to set synapses sparking and multiplying.
“You’re going to make connections. It’s all part of a picture.”
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