Genoa student earns trip to national math competition

Bart Niday was the top scorer in the state at Nevada's MathCounts competition in Reno March 18.

The seventh-grader and three other Nevada MathCounts winners will represent Nevada in the Lockheed Martin MathCounts National Competition May 11-14 in Arlington, Va.

"I was surprised but not as surprised as when our team won," said Bart, 13. "We (the Carson Valley Middle School team) won the regional thing by a lot."

Bart, three teammates and a coach will go to the MathCounts to compete for scholarships, computers and space camp trips.

"The MathCounts program is to get kids interested in math and math careers," said state competition coordinator Tim Holst. "It's funded by sponsors like the National Society for Professional Engineers and volunteers.

"It's up to the coaches on how to practice. The national contest is a similar format to state - written and oral portions, individual and team rounds. The oral part is the most exciting. That's when you have two kids with their hands on the buzzers and answer questions on the screen," Holst said.

Bart takes the Integrated 3 honors math in Larry Lippmann's Douglas High School class.

Bart said he'll take trigonometry next year but by 10th grade the high school probably won't have any more math classes for him and he'll have to take correspondence classes.

He said he doesn't have tournament experience, but besides working with his MathCounts team, Bart doesn't plan on doing anything different.

"I've never prepared for anything," he said.