Lincoln Middle School MATHCOUNTS team wins state championship

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

For the fifth time in the last six statewide MATHCOUNTS competitions (there were no competitions in 2020 and 2021), the Lincoln Middle School MATHCOUNTS team has won the state championship, which was held this past Wednesday. Amazingly, five of the students who competed also won the Florida state science bowl a few weeks ago.

Four of the six Lincoln students made it to the competition’s countdown round, which means they scored in the top ten overall. No other school had more than one student make it into the countdown round. Three of those scores contributed to the team score, allowing Lincoln to beat their competition by a wide margin. 

The top four mathletes in the state competition advance to the national competition in Washington, D.C., as the state team, so two of the Lincoln students, Michael Wei (who took 3rd place) and Anish Patel (who took 4th place), will now be members of Team Florida, which will compete in early May.

A photo of the full team is shown above. From left to right, the students are Michael Wei, Anish Patel, Adityaa Ravi, Bryan Zheng, Jimmy Jiang, and Saber Lian. All are in 8th grade. The first four students on the list comprised the team, while Jimmy was a team alternate who competed as an individual, and Saber also competed as an individual. In addition to Michael’s 3rd-place finish and Anish’s 4th-place finish, Adityaa took 8th place overall and Jimmy took 10th.
 
Their sponsor is Jennifer Frazer, who is a guidance counselor/database manager at Buchholz High (the students take classes at BHS in the morning and Lincoln in the afternoon). She’s to the right of the students in the photo, and the adults on the outside are MATHCOUNTS officials.