The MathCounts team from the Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb placed second in the regional competition on Saturday, Jan. 31. The event was held at Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield. This year’s team included Adeline Inman, Charlie Record, Enilea Burns, and Toby McKenzie, all seventh graders. Their coach, Nick Record, is in his fourth year with the team, which meets once a week as a free afterschool club at CTL.

MathCounts is a national non-profit promoting mathematics and problem solving. Hundreds of thousands of middle school students throughout the US participate each year. The organization encourages students to love math and develop resilience, using problem-solving questions to help middle school kids embrace challenges.

At the regional level, students participate in four rounds of competition during the day-long experience. There are two individual written exams (with and without calculators), followed by a team round, where four students work together to solve ten problems in twenty minutes. Finally, the top ten competitors participate in a countdown round, where they battle game show-style, head to head, using buzzers.

After the countdown round was complete on Saturday, Toby McKenzie placed fifth overall, and Charlie Record placed sixth.

Since each school is eligible to enter just one four-person team, CTL students also formed part of an “unofficial” team that competed, consisting of eighth grader Jackie Branch and sixth grader Cora Coleman. Fifth graders Gannon Inman and Olivia Tindal also attended the competition.

CTL is consistently among the smallest schools participating in local MathCounts competitions, yet achieves consistently excellent results due to the students’ passion for the subject, CTL’s emphasis on mathematics and problem solving, and the perseverance and consistent effort put in by them and their coach. The CTL team will compete at the upcoming Maine state finals on March 14, both as a team and individually.