"They thought they were out of the running," said Thom Sanders-Garrett, the Sussex School principal. "By the time they called out the winning teams, our team had all but packed its bags."

The four combined 11th-place finishes was good enough to give the Sussex team, made up of eighth-graders Forrest Horton, Cory Turner, Taylor Brugh and Kelsyn Bevins, second place in the team competition. The combined scores of the Sussex team, which was coached by Bente Winston, was topped only by a squad from Helena Middle School. A team from Sidney placed third.

Sanders-Garrett said the odd grouping of Sussex students, who won the local Mathcounts contest last month, turned a few heads at the annual contest, which brings together the state's top seventh- and eighth-grade mathematicians.

"It was a little unusual," Sanders-Garrett said. "Typically teams have one star and the other kids are also-rans. It's unusual to have so many kids place that high."

Sanders-Garrett also pointed out that the Sussex team members achieved the same scores through different means.

"They all got different problems wrong," Sanders-Garrett said with a chuckle.

The top five individual finishers in the Mathcounts competition qualified to compete as a team in the national contest next month in Washington, D.C. That team will include one Missoula member - eighth-grader Jesse Klein of St. Joseph School. The rest of the team will be made up two students from Helena, one from Sidney and one from Billings.

Students competing in Mathcounts are tested in subjects such as algebra, geometry and statistics. Nationally, more than 7,000 schools and 350,000 students participate in the competition each year.

Name:

Email:

Comments:

Current Word Count:

Image Verification: (Case sensitive)