Marksmen excel in MATHCOUNTS competition

Fourteen Marksmen competed in the annual Dallas MATHCOUNTS chapter competition on Feb. 8, bringing home multiple individual and team awards. MATHCOUNTS is a nationwide mathematics competition series that culminates in MATHCOUNTS Nationals in May — the top four students in each state are selected to compete in Nationals through the School, Chapter and State competitions.
All MATHCOUNTS competitions follow the same structure: two individual rounds known as the “sprint” and “target” rounds followed by the team and countdown rounds. The sprint round features 30 problems designed to be solved quickly, while the much slower-paced target round only has eight difficult questions. During the team round, four students from one school collaborate to solve ten problems, and the countdown round consists of a bracket where two students face each other to solve questions as fast as they can.
Texas has historically been one of the most successful states in the MATHCOUNTS series. As a result, the Chapter and State competitions are quite competitive; there are typically far more than four candidates that are qualified enough for the national competition.
However, this year, the school had an extremely strong showing at their chapter competition, with multiple top individual finishes. MATHCOUNTS sponsor and Middle School math instructor Valerie Davis believes that their success stems from months of preparation and hard work.
“They did awesome,” Davis said. “Out of the 14 boys we sent, ten of them were in the top 16 out of about 100 kids total. One of our guys went home early, so technically we had 11 in the top 17.”
The school’s four-person squad that competed in the team round, consisting of eighth graders Nathan Liu, David Xiao, William Tu and seventh grader Roger Wang, also performed well, achieving a first-place finish among seven other teams.
“Because they got first place, all four members of the team are headed to the state competition on March 8,” Davis said. “In addition, eighth grader Trevor Hsu qualified as an individual.”
The fast-paced countdown round saw multiple students from the school obtain podium finishes. In fact, the majority of the matches were between two Marksmen.
“Nathan came in first place in the countdown round,” Davis said. “David Xiao came in third place, and sixth grader Max Cao was actually in fourth place, so they had to battle each other.”
Finally, in terms of overall individual rankings, St. Mark’s dominated the standings with similar finishes.
“William came in fourth place in the top five, and Nathan came in first,” Davis said. “Overall, our team came in first place, so it was a very successful competition.”