February 21, 2025
Facing a large pool of teams and students, the Gilbert Middle School MathCounts team performed incredibly well earlier this month when it took part in the Central Iowa Chapter MathCounts Competition at the FFA Enrichment Center on the DMACC campus in Ankeny.
There were 27 teams — many of them from larger schools such as Ames, Waukee, Ankeny, and Johnston, just to name a few — and 248 total competitors.
Gilbert MathCounts advisor Joel Franzen had 10 students involved, and five of them — Drake Wang (10th place), Charis Chu (19th), Zach Goldsmith (20th), Jack Poss (42nd), and Isabel Just (61st) finished in the top 25 percent of the field.
But wait, it gets better.
The team of Drake Wang, Zach Goldsmith, Jack Poss, and Atesh McKilligan placed fifth overall and qualified for the state competition on March 28. The group also won the award for Best Small School.
Also taking part for Gilbert were Samuel Scallon and Azaria Telesford. Nathanael Scallon and Daniel An competed as alternates.
MathCounts is a national program that provides students in grades 6-8 the chance to compete against and alongside their peers. There are three rounds:
- The sprint round (40 minutes to do 30 problems).
- The target round (four pairs of problems and teams have six minutes to complete each pair).
- The team round (20 minutes to complete 10 problems as a team).
Teams that finish in the top five also take part in the countdown round, which is going head-to-head with 45 seconds to solve a problem.
Congratulations to all of our students who took part and did so well, and good luck to our state qualifying team. We know you will represent Gilbert Middle School and the entire school district well.
