SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - In November, Jillian Mullin, Pottsville, took stage as Clara in Schuylkill Ballet Theatre's performance of "The Nutcracker."
On Saturday, the eighth-grade student from Pottsville Area's D.H.H. Lengel Middle School was on stage again, but performing very different sets of steps. Some involved addition and subtraction. And others, numerous rounds of multiplication.
She was the last "mathlete" standing at the annual Anthracite Regional MATHCOUNTS Competition, held at Penn State Schuylkill campus, Schuykill Haven.
"I wasn't even sure if I was going to place. Getting up there is so nerve-wracking. I wasn't sure how I was going to do," Mullin said.
This was the second year she participated in the regional MATHCOUNTS competition.
"I've always been really good at math. And I thought I'd do it again, because I had fun," Mullin said.
Mullin and a team of four Blue Mountain Area students will be heading to the MATHCOUNTS 2013 State Competition slated for March 22 and 23 at Sheraton Harrisburg-Hershey.
The MATHCOUNTS Competition Program is a national middle school coaching and competitive mathematics program that promotes mathematics achievement through a series of fun and engaging "bee" style contests. The program exists in all 50 states plus U.S. territories and the Department of Defense and State Department schools, according to the event website at mathcounts.org.
Students enrolled in the sixth, seventh or eighth grade are eligible to participate in MATHCOUNTS competitions.
"It gets people to think," said Morgan Gower, an eighth-grade student from Weatherly Area, who was one of top 10 finalists.
On Saturday at Penn State Schuylkill, 73 students came, representing nine school districts: Blue Mountain, Pottsville Area, St. Jerome, Weatherly, Schuylkill Haven, Tamaqua Area, Saint Clair Area, St. Ambrose, and Mount Carmel.
In the team competitions, Pottsville Area came in second and Tamaqua Area finished third behind Blue Mountain, according to Mike Peleschak, a project engineer for Alfred Benesch & Co., Pottsville, who is a representative of the Anthracite Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers, which hosts the regional MATHCOUNTS Competition.
All students who come out for the competition are tested through a series of rounds which test the students ability to be accurate on deadline and use calculators to solve multi-step problems.
The top 10 who scored the best in those tests took stage for a showdown, "The Countdown Round." They are paired against one another to solve problems, with countdown clocks set at 45 seconds per problem, according to Peleschak.
All eighth-grade students, they were: Mullin, Collin Herndon, Logan Spevak and Charlie Botto of Pottsville Area's D.H.H. Lengle Middle School; Gower, John Hinkle, and Chris MacNeal from Weatherly Area Middle School; Danielle Schuller from Blue Mountain; Adam Shumgart from Tamaqua Area Middle School; and Patrick Crane from St. Ambrose.
The problems were complex, involving angles of isosceles triangle, common fractions, positive integers and the perimeter of a rhombus.
Peleschak said the Anthracite Regional MATHCOUNTS would not release any of the specific problems to the public, since regional MATHCOUNTS competitions are still being held and the same problems are used in each.
However, he presented the media with a sample: "A 3-ounce can of tomato sauce costs $1.68. In cents, what is the price per ounce?"
"It's 56," Peleschak said.
Gower made a strong impression at the start, beating Botto, Crane, Shumgart, Spevak and Herndon.
She was beaten by MacNeal, then MacNeal lost to Schuller. Schuller lost to Hinkle, then Hinkle had a showdown with Mullin, and Mullin won.
MATHCOUNTS started in 1983, so this is its 30th anniversary, according to mathcounts.org.