Reed Team Places 3rd in Math Competition

Mathematically speaking, it was a squeaker.

Brandon Ashe, a student from North Hollywood’s Walter Reed Middle School, took third place in the individual competition of the state Mathcounts finals, missing second place--and a trip to the national competition--by one arithmetically measly point.

At Saturday’s competition held at UC Irvine, Brandon and teammates Melvin Chu, Jeffrey Zira and Natalie Stein deftly handled geometry and algebra problems that could challenge an adult engineer.

In the team competition, the Walter Reed quartet took third place overall. The seventh- and eighth-graders were edged out by teams from Palos Verdes Intermediate School and Huntington Middle School in San Marino.

The two students with the highest individual scores, James Merryfield of Hughes Middle School in Long Beach, and Elizabeth Williams of Palos Verdes Intermediate School, will join Northern California’s two top finishers in May as the team that will represent California in Washington, D.C.

The program is sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, among others.