Mathcounts Champions Organizing Pi Day Fundraiser for the Homeless Garden Project

Feb 18

On February 7, students across Santa Cruz and Monterey competed to solve fun and challenging math problems at the Monterey Chapter of the Mathcounts Competition. Mathcounts is one of the big two national middle-school math competitions (along with AMC 8), and has a mission of making learning math fun and promoting problem-solving skills.

This was the first year Santa Cruz school teams participated, and they performed remarkably, winning all the team, individual and countdown awards at the chapter level. The 1st place team and the next top two individuals will be competing at the state competition on March 28th!

These students don’t just care about math though, they want to use their talents to help others and build community. Liana Lee (1st place individual, 2nd place countdown), has been organizing a math group this year where students practice competition math problems. She teaches alongside three other Santa Cruz kids: Mike Qiu (1st place countdown), Isaac Bellik (3rd place individual, 3rd place countdown), and Isobel Lee (too young to compete). Most of the Monterey Chapter competition awardees this year are members of this group.

Liana, Isobel, Mike, and Isaac have been raising money for the Homeless Garden Project through their math group teaching. They are now inviting the community to participate in the fundraiser through a Pi Day event on March 14 (the first 3 digits of pi are 3.14). The students will sell slices of pie for $3.14 and host fun math activities for kids. The event will be held at 850 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060.The schedule will be:

12:40pm for savory pies (lunch!) followed by dessert pies till 4pm
1:59pm for math activities and a raffle prize drawing at 3:40pm

See the Pi Day flyer (fill out the RSVP form here!) and learn about their math group on their website, Math Olympiad Fun. If you want to help them in their volunteering efforts, if you want to support the homeless garden project, or if you have kids that like eating pies or doing math, we hope to see you at the event!

Congrats again to all the participants and awardees at the Monterey Chapter Mathcounts Competition!

Team awards

1st: Ocean Grove Charter School (Liana Lee, Ethan Burson, Greg Sergeev, Michelle Tzeng)
2nd: Scotts Valley Middle School (Jaden Qian, Jolene Qian, Gary Gong, Hulu Tong)
3rd: Mission Hill Middle School (Mike Qiu, Ihan Kang, Dylan Blakeslee, Cooper Drexel)

Individual awards