At this year’s Washington State Mathematics Council’s Math Olympiad, Orcas students proudly donned the 2016 version of the coveted student-designed competition t-shirts first thing in the morning of the event. After ten weeks of practices after school, sometimes meeting twice a week, these mathaletes were ready to team-up and collaboratively solve problems for half of a sunny, spring May Saturday.

Fourteen Orcas Elementary and Middle School students traveled to the Sequim Middle School to join the roughly 2,600 mathaletes, from 60 or so schools across the state, that traveled to 18 different host sites to work in teams to tackle problems that sometimes bend the brains of their volunteer coaches.

This year’s competition was on May 7th and Orcas Elementary and Middle Schools sent four teams total; sending one 5th grade team with four members; one 6th grade team with four members; and two 7th grade teams with three members each.

The teams started off with an hour-long problem-solving session with the calculations required varying by grade level, but all involving figuring out timber dimensions ranging from the diameter and height in tree feet, to total board feet converted into number of homes possible from a uniform stand of Douglas Fir on one acre of slightly hilly land.

This long problem was followed up by five 20 minute sessions of problems from these categories: Number Systems; Ratios and Proportional Relationships; Statistics and Probability; Expressions and Equations and Geometry.

The teams came away with nine Excellent ratings and two Superior ratings. Most importantly, they came away proud of their efforts, enthusiastic about academic math challenges and exposed to the myriad ways that math problems exist in real world applications. All the calculations and smiles on this terrific two-day field trip were made possible by the support of Orcas Island Education Foundation and the Orcas Island School District