BY DANIEL SHEA (DAILY NEWS STAFF) 
Published: February 25, 2011 (used with permission)

 

St. Croix Country Day School came out the victor thanks to strong performances in the individual rounds.

In addition to the four-member team from Country Day, six other students from three schools also will compete in the territorial competition March 17 to fill the four seats on the Virgin Islands Mathcounts team that will travel to Washington, D.C., for the national competition.

The competition among middle school mathletes tests the students' problem-solving skills in a variety of ways - the common denominator being speed.

Accuracy helps, too - though at times, the two are not compatible.

Divided among 17 tables in the Good Hope School gym, students from 11 schools huddled over packets of paper - some nibbling on erasers, others gnawing on fingernails - as they waded through heaps of mathematical quandaries.

Country Day eighth-grader Osaze Newton took the top score in the individual rounds - the Sprint and Target rounds - by narrowly edging out his seventh-grade Country Day teammate, Julian DiPersio.

"My favorite thing is, probably, that there's a way to show off math skills, because there's not a lot of ways to show off math skills," Osaze said.

He said he was much more confident in his second year competing.

Osaze was a finalist in the Countdown Round - a one-on-one speed competition set up like a bracketed tournament - but he lost out to Elena Christian eighth-grader Raheem Knight, who was one of the top four in the territory last year and who recently placed second in the St. Croix District Spelling Bee.

Raheem, 13, said he thrives on competition and was excited to come in first in the speed-based competition, which began with a pool of the top 12 scoring students in the individual round.

"I'm feeling good right now," Raheem said. "Last year I placed third. This year I placed first. This is my last year, so I feel good about achieving that."

The key, Raheem said, is simple: "Make sure your calculations are correct."

Country Day won the territorial competition last year and showed up strong in the district competition once again, with six of the 10 students moving on to compete in the territorial competition coming from that school.

The four-member Country Day team - Osaze, Julian, Kari Currence and Francesca Pastore - will compete against their St. Thomas-St. John counterparts on March 17 to decide which school will be named territorial champion. The winning team's coach also will go on to coach the Virgin Islands team that will compete May 5-8 in Washington, D.C.

Country Day coach Rachel Newman, who was the territorial coach last year, said she was thrilled at how many of her students qualified to compete in the territorial Mathcounts. To prepare, she and her students meet regularly to practice and discuss common equations and problem-solving methods.

"We meet twice a week for about an hour using old competition rounds from previous years, and they usually explain the answers to each other," she said.