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Plum Grove Junior High Team Wins State Math Competition
A team of eighth-graders from Plum Grove Junior High took first place in the state MATHCOUNTS competition held on Feb. 24, and one team member also scored a first and second place in the individual category. The contest pitted approximately 225 students from 70 schools around the state in both team and individual rounds.
Plum Grove’s winning first place team included James Qi, Michael Banasiak, Sarah Yang and Charles Feng. James Qi, competing on an individual basis, won second in the written round and first in the oral count-down round, and as one of the top four state competitors, he will be part of the four-member team representing Illinois in the national MATHCOUNTS contest on May 11 in Washington, D.C. Teacher Rita Sheridan and volunteer Dr. Krish Revuluri, coaches of the winning team, will coach the Illinois team in the national competition.
MATHCOUNTS is a national organization sponsored in part by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and a number of industrial and high-tech corporations. Its purpose is to promote student interest in math at the junior high level and to make math achievement as challenging, exciting and prestigious as a school sport. Participating schools select students to compete in challenging math competitions, starting at the local level and progressing to state and national contests.
Other Plum Grove winners in the state competition were eighth-graders Michael Banasiak, fifth place; Charles Feng, eighth; Sarah Yang, thirteenth place and the top-scoring female competitor; and Stephanie Shurtz, twenty-first. Seventh-grader Andy Wilson placed thirty-third.
Plum Grove Junior High has had a highly successful track record in MATHCOUNTS competitions. Plum Grove students have placed in the top six in state MATHCOUNTS competitions every year since 1994, and, with this win, have taken first place in Illinois three times.
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