The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Union's Junior High Math Team consisting of five 8th graders and one 7th grader traveled to Bettendorf, IA, Saturday, February 2, 2002, to compete in the Mathcounts Contest. The competition consisted of five other teams: Washington Middle School from Rock Island, Churchill Middle School from Galesburg, Seton Catholic from Moline and Silvis Junior High from Silvis. Union came in second finishing behind Washington Middle School who competed at the State competition at Oakton Community College on March 9, 2002.
The competition consisted of 3 individual components and one team test. In the Sprint Round each competitor has 40 minutes to answer 30 problems without using a calculator. The next test is the Target Round in which each competitor has 6 minutes to complete 2 problems with the use of a calculator. The final test is the Team Round in which a team of 4 students has 20 minutes to complete 10 problems again using a calculator. Once the results are tallied the top ten individuals get to participate in an oral competition called the Countdown Round. They begin with student #9 and student #10 and they have 45 seconds to answer are problem shown on the overhead. The person that answers 2 of 3 correctly moves on to compete against student #8 and so on. So student #10 could move to the #1 spot if he/she continued to answer correctly. We had two individuals make it to the countdown round. Jacob Sanning (8th Grade) finished 4th and Blake Byers (8th Grade) finished 5th.
Jacob received a trophy for his fourth place finished and the entire team received trophies for their 2nd place finish. This is the highest that a team from Union has ever placed in the Mathcounts competition.
Unfortunately this is the only math competition for the Math Team this year. We usually participate in a local competition at Carthage, but due to calendar conflicts we will not be able to defend last year's 1st Place finish.
Back Row: Mrs. Frieden, Geoff Torrance, Chase Gray, Blake Byers
Front Row: Jacob Sanning, Lene Lox, Clarissa Torrance