News Release

25 area schools compete in MATHCOUNTS competition Feb. 9

January 4, 2008

Hershey Middle School will be seeking its fifth consecutive championship when teams from 25 area schools converge on Penn State Harrisburg for the 24th annual MATHCOUNTS competition.

More than 180 area schoolchildren are registered to participate in the day-long competition which begins with the "Sprint Round" at 9:45 a.m. and closes with the "Countdown Round" at 1:05 p.m. The awards presentation is scheduled for 2 p.m.

MATHCOUNTS is a nationwide program for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students designed to promote excellence in mathematics through coaching and competition. The local event in the Capital Union Building at Penn State Harrisburg is organized each year by the Harrisburg Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers.

Local chapter members, Penn State Harrisburg School of Science, Engineering, and Technology students and faculty volunteers, and sponsors distribute materials to participating schools, coordinate the competition site, perform fund-raising duties, provide lunches, score and tabulate the results, and present the awards.

The program is designed to build skills, promote strategic problem solving, and instruct students in dealing with complex problems and hard-to-handle numbers – all critical parts of our technological society.

The annual coaching phase begins in the fall, covering everything from basic arithmetic skills to math logic, probability and statistics, linear algebra, and polynomials. The competitions start in January with in-school qualifying tests, followed by the February regional event. Each year, more than 500,000 students nationwide are exposed to MATHCOUNTS at the local school level.

The top four individual winners based on their individual rankings, along with the top school team from the Feb. 9 Harrisburg Chapter regional competition advance to the State competition March 23 and 24 at the Harrisburg-Hershey Sheraton. The top four individual winners at the State event will advance to the Lockheed Martin MATHCOUNTS National Competition in Denver, Colo. May 8 to 11.

Students from the following counties and schools will be competing at Penn State Harrisburg Feb. 9.

Dauphin – Central Dauphin Middle School, Creative Home Educators Support Services, Middletown Area Middle School, Hershey Middle School, Lower Dauphin Middle School, Saint Catherine Laboure School, Saint Margaret Mary School, Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary School, Steelton-Highspire Middle School, Susquehanna Township Middle School.

Cumberland – Allen Middle School, Big Spring Middle School, Camp Hill Middle School, Eagle View Middle School, Good Hope Middle School, Harrisburg Academy, Lamberton Middle School, Lemoyne Middle School, Mechanicsburg Middle School, PA Cyber School, Saint Patrick School, Wilson Middle School.

Juniata – Tuscarora Junior High School.

York – Northern Middle School, Crossroads Middle School.