The Forks Mathletes recently turned in their best performance in their four years of competing in the State Math Competition, taking three second-place finishes. The event was held in Yakima at Eisenhower High School on Saturday, April 11. In 2010 the Spartans collected one third place, in 2011 they picked up a first and and in 2012 they snagged a first place and two third place finishes.

This year’s competition started with Stevi Martinez-Jewett and Rebekah Johansen working on the Team Problem, which the teams have one hour to solve. Stevi and Rebekah finished in second place out of 34 teams in Division 2.

Nick Gilmore finished second in the Ad Hoc Topical Problem. The Ad Hoc provides students who qualified for state in another event with the opportunity to compete again by joining two other students from other schools and other grade levels.

The big finish of the day was provided by the Forks team of Rachel Harner, Alissa Shaw and Sehar Bokhari, who together finished in second place in the Team Project. The students had to go to 101 Acts, an Internet site, where they viewed video clips and pictures. They then had to find ways to use them as math-related teaching tools.

The students used three of the pictures to create three teaching tools of their own.

The Spartans beat out Foss High School and Archbishop Murphy from the Tacoma/Seattle area and many other schools to finish second to Curtis High School by only 4.5 points.

They also were the first all-girls team to place at state in the Team Project.

Forks High mathematics teacher Allen Lewis said, “All the team members did a great job by having two teams finish second.” He noted that more than 20 of the competing schools failed to score a finish.