The Central math club and students in honors enrichment math (e-math) classes hosted the 83rd annual middle school math competition at Central on Nov. 14. The event was attended by nearly 300 students from 23 different middle schools across Nebraska, including a school from Scottsbluff who drove eight hours to participate.
The competition was split into three parts. The individual computation is 20 multiple choice questions in 20 minutes without a calculator. The Team Problem Solving contest was 10 questions in 20 minutes with a calculator and involved students in groups of three. The Math Bowl round consisted of buzzer rounds where schools go head-to-head in rounds of seven questions read orally.
Teacher and math club sponsor Lauren Beitel remarked this year’s competition was one of the largest ever. “We’ve never had so many kids from various schools, and they all had a lot of fun,” Beitel said.
She also appreciates the planning her e-math students took part in. Each year, the students write contest questions and review what the competition will look like. Then, seniors in e-math and math club come together and pick the contest’s theme.
This year, the seniors picked Ancient Greece, decorating the school with Greek memorabilia and designing t-shirts to fit the theme. Beitel focused on planning the logistics of the competition, including communication with teachers at middle schools. Some students helped her with logistics as well.
“I made sure scores were getting uploaded into the spreadsheet so we could adequately keep track of team and individual scores,” junior Joshua Shapiro said. He said the coordinating his peers and Beitel do is the only reason the competition has survived for so long.
Math Club President Orion Schoell-Schafer, a senior, said the competition went very smoothly, especially compared to previous years. He hopes that future contests face little challenges and have enough time to plan. He thinks the visitors enjoyed Central and the contest.
“The questions went really well, and our theming was popular,” sophomore Ashton Fischer said.
Sophomore Thomas Woodworth attended the contest as a middle schooler and now plans it through his e-math class. His role this year was to assist in running the buzzers for the speed math rounds.
“It’s a lot more fun to create the questions than to answer them,” Woodworth said.
Apart from the planning of the competition, it also draws many middle schoolers interested in Central to the school. Beitel described the contest as a fun competition along with being a tool for recruiting students to attend Central and maintaining Central’s positive reputation in the community.
The math club and e-math students will continue their year by attending collegiate math competitions and hosting a charity fundraiser to pie teachers in December.
