Countywide : Students to Compete in Mathcounts Event

Some Ventura County junior high students will flex their thinking muscles today as scholars from around the state compete to see which teams and individuals are the most nimble number-crunchers.

The four-member team from Fremont Intermediate School in Oxnard, along with one school team each from Goleta and Santa Barbara, defeated four rival teams to advance to the competition, called Mathcounts.

In addition, three of the top four students who won spots on the all-star team representing Santa Barbara and Ventura counties are from Ventura County schools.

The event at the University of California, Irvine pits seventh- and eighth-grade students in a timed test of their problem-solving skills in linear algebra, statistics, probability and polynomials.

The event is sponsored by the California Society of Professional Engineers to combat declining test scores among pre-college students, said Robert Morris, chairman of Mathcounts for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The winning team receives a trophy, but teams do not advance to the national competition. Only the top four individuals from each state continue on to compete in Washington, D.C., on April 29. The hardest part of competition is racing with the clock, said Josh Scherbenski, 13, an eighth-grader from Chaparral Middle School in Moorpark, who placed on the all-star team.

Claire Luna, a member of the Fremont Intermediate team, said math isn’t really her subject. She gets frustrated by problems that seem too hard, but the honors algebra class she takes at Oxnard High School helps, Claire said.

The other students competing from Ventura County are Jane Kim, Rudolph Calasin and Phillip Ramey, all from Fremont Intermediate School; Tim Connolly from Anacapa Middle School in Ventura and Jonathon Hart from E.O. Green School in Oxnard.