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University School of Milwaukee hosted more than 80 middle school students on Saturday, Nov. 16 for a practice math meet. The event was an unofficial tournament intended to help USM students, as well as students from other schools, prepare for the official Mathcounts regionals tournament at UW-Milwaukee in February. Winners of the regionals tournament will advance to the Mathcounts state competition.
A total of 17 USM Middle School students competed on Nov. 16, with 10 of them ranked among the top 20 students overall (see below). One of the USM teams won 1st place (Jiyan Singh ’30, Mishee Singh ’30, and Sam Yuan ’29) and another USM team won 3rd place (Ayan Iyengar ’29, Kiran Ramanujam ’29, Sophie Kouklin ’29, and Mae Lilly ’29).
Ten USM students ranked among the top 20 students overall:
Jiyan Singh ’30, 1st place
Sam Yuan ’29, 3rd place
Ayan Iyengar ’29, tied for 5th place
Mishee Singh ’30, tied for 8th place
Sophie Kouklin ’29, tied for 12th place
Kiran Ramanujam ’29, tied for 12th place
Abe Herrick ’30, 14th place
Alex Lemieux ’31, tied for 17th place
Sudarshan Tallam ’30, tied for 17th place
Mae Lilly ’29, 20th place
Several Upper School students played a key role in both running the event and also coaching the Middle School players as they practice and prepare. The following Upper School students served as both coaches and meet volunteers: Alex Chen ’25, Chloe Chen ’27, Sami El-Hajjar ’27, Anand George ’26, Iris Liu ’28, Raymond Yang ’27, and Zara Vaseem ’26. Vaseem and Chloe Chen also served as MCs for the event, and they both serve as Mathcounts captains, along with Grace Chen ’27 and Angela Wang ’26. The captains help to organize the student coaches.
In addition, Chloe Chen, El-Hajjar, and Wang volunteered to write the test that the students took during the event. “Ensuring that all of the problems are well written, appropriately challenging for middle schoolers, and have correct answers takes considerable time and is not an easy thing to do,” event organizer and volunteer Marcia Mihdawi noted.
Many thanks to all of the volunteers, including the following adult volunteers and event organizers: Pablo Barrutia, volunteer; Melissa Beihoff, organizer and 5th grade math teacher; Kundan Kishor, volunteer; Marcia Mihdawi, organizer and volunteer; Sonal Shah, organizer and 7th grade math teacher; and Dalip Singh, volunteer.
