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The Honolulu Advertiser

Updated at 3:17 p.m., Saturday, May 12, 2007

Texan takes honors at national math contest

By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

Kevin Chen of Sugarland, Texas, won the MathCounts National Champion title yesterday in Fort Worth at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The eighth-grader from First Colony Middle School competed against 227 other middle school students in this prestigious competition, hosted by Lockheed Martin, a MathCounts national sponsor.

Chen was victorious in the intense, one-on-one oral Countdown Round where the Top 12 "mathletes" competed for the title of MathCounts National Champion.

Ben Kraft of Bethlehem, Penn., was awarded the second-place individual title with Wenyu Cao of Belle Mead, N.J., and Allen Yuan of Northville, Mich., advancing to the semifinals.

None of the four Hawai'i students who competed placed in the top 12.

In the team competition, Texas captured the title of National Team Champions. Team members include Kevin Chen of Missouri City, Jeff Feng of Houston, Kevin Li of College Station, Bobby Shen of Sugarland and coach Jeff Boyd of Sugarland.

The Indiana team took second place, and the Pennsylvania team placed third.

"Congratulations to each of these students on their amazing accomplishments," said E. Bruce Lawson, chairman of the MathCounts Foundation, in a news release. "These Mathletes, and all of their counterparts around the nation, deserve our praise and acknowledgement of their talent and dedication. MathCounts is honored to support the efforts of U.S. middle school students to develop strong mathematical abilities."

Student representatives of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Department of Defense and State Department schools worldwide participated

the national competition.

The top four students in each state competition in March earned the honor of forming a team and advancing to yesterday's culmination of the MathCounts competition.

As the national champ, Chen won the $8,000 Donald G. Weinert Scholarship, a trip to U.S. Space Camp and a notebook computer. Kraft won a $6,000 scholarship as 2nd Place Individual. Semi-finalists Cao and Yuan each won a $4,000 scholarship, and Chen's coach, Jeff Boyd, received a notebook computer. Chen and Kraft each also won a full scholarship ($3,000) to attend the AwesomeMath Summer Program.

Justin Ahmann of Indiana won an $8,000 scholarship as the Written Round Winner and Yuan also won a $6,000 scholarship as Written Round Runner-up.

Additionally, each team member from first-place Texas won a $2,000 scholarship, trips to U.S. Space Camp and a notebook computer.

Celebrating its 24th anniversary, MathCounts is a national mathematics enrichment, coaching and competition program open to all 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. Each year, more than 500,000 middle school students use free MathCounts materials in their schools to sharpen their math skills.

For more information visit www.mathcounts.org.

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com. Read her blog, The Daily Dish, at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.