On the same weekend that high school hockey players skate for their State Championship, 125 of Minnesota’s top middle school mathletes will gather at the Crowne Plaza in Plymouth, Minnesota.
They’re coming from 36 schools to compete for the State MATHCOUNTS championship. The two days the mathletes spend grappling with factorials, formulas and probabilities are the final step in a journey that will lead four of them to the National Championships in Orlando, FL.
Friday evening, March 10, includes opportunities for mathletes to get acquainted and team up to work on an engineering problem. They’ll have a chance to move their math skills from abstract to very practical as they build a spaghetti bridge, a bot or a catapult.
Saturday is Competition Day when 125 nervous, vocal middle-schoolers take three paper and pencil tests before moving to the high-tension final test — the Countdown Round.
Two by two the day’s top-scoring competitors will face off and race to answer a series of announced questions. It’s a high-tension event compared by some to walking a math tightrope, without a net, in front of an intent audience of family, friends and coaches
The competition ends with an Awards Ceremony. The top four mathletes will advance to the National MATHCOUNTS Competition in Orlando May 13-16; the next four will become alternates to the national event. Top mathletes and teams will be recognized as will coaches who have brought teams to State for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.
And then with last-minute hugs and frantic searches for lost shoes and abandoned calculators, the 2023 Minnesota mathletes head home.
