In the most highly spirited competition in years, the Boothbay Region High School math team computed its way to a finger-biting first place finish in last Wednesday’s Mountain Valley Conference mathematics meet held at Carrabec High School in North Anson.

With a streaming computer-driven scoreboard showing contemporaneous results on a screen ten feet from their competition table, the team watched their fortunes go up and down, round by round, throughout the ten-round tournament. From the onset, it was clear the two top schools were Boothbay and the team from Carrabec. After Carrabec took the lead in round 1 and held it through round 2, Boothbay snatched the lead in round 3 only to lose it back to Carrabec in round 4. With a sterling performance in round 6, Boothbay regained the lead before watching it dwindle to a mere 9 points after round 8. All that remained were two rounds of cooperative team questions, a weak area for the Boothbay Region team all year. Not this day. Using a new approach to the team questions, the Seahawks tied Carrabec in rounds 9 and 10 and the final leaderboard read:

Boothbay Region 332

Carrabec 323

Winthrop 219

Monmouth 197

Mt. Abram 172

Boothbay team members also won three of the eight individual performance trophies at the meet. Connor Demmons was the top-scoring sophomore among all the sophomores at the meet as well as the top-scoring overall individual among all competitors, Griffin Kane was the top-scoring junior, and Marinel Demmons was the third best senior. Freshman and first-time competitor Hannah Gentry was the second best freshman, Loren Genrich was the fourth, and Gabbie Boord was the fifth. Sophomore Max Hoecker achieved the fifth best score for a sophomore.

The Boothbay team fielded 216 questions during the course of the ten round tournament. They answered exactly 108 correctly within the time limits. Had they missed two or three of the 108 questions they got right, they would not have won. It was that close.

The Mountain Valley Conference meet has taken place in March of each year for over 20 years. It is a springboard to the Maine State Math Meet held each April. This year’s state meet will include over 1,000 high school students from over 100 high schools, public and private, and will take place at the Augusta Civic Center on Tuesday, April 5. The Seahawk team looks forward to testing its mettle against Maine’s finest young math whizzes and Maine’s finest teams.

Seahawk math team members who have scored points at meets during this season include:

Freshmen: Gabbie Boord, Loren Genrich, Faith Blethen and Hannah Gentry.

Sophomores: Max Hoecker, Connor Demmons and Kyle Alley.

Juniors Sam Betts, Griffin Kane, Angelique Perkins, Kate Friant and Noah Sherburne.

Seniors: Marinel Demmons, Angela Machon, Gretchen Elder, Lisa Pawlowski and Morgen Wilson.