Mathapalooza rocks at Los Altos

The third annual Mathapalooza included 292 participants and more than 90 volunteers. The students came from Torrance, San Marino, Chino Hills, West Covina, Rowland Heights, La Puente and Hacienda Heights.

This competition took place at Los Altos High School and was sponsored
by the high school, the Chinese American Parents Advisory Council
(CAPAC) and the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District (HLPUSD).
Los Altos teachers Leo Lopez and Jeff Hess teamed up with CAPAC as
event hosts.

Mathapalooza is a math competition in algebra and pre-algebra for middle school students. It  included a 30-minute written test for individuals and buzzer rounds for team play.

Two Hacienda Heights middle schools earned the overall Grand trophy. Newton for pre-algebra and Mesa Robles for algebra. The Team Overall Gold went to Premier Academy of San Marino for pre-algebra and Mesa Robles for algebra.

Individual gold medals in pre-algebra were earned by Nancy Li, Vanessa Chou, Kimberly Wong, Jonathan Pena, Michael Peralta, Erik Gurrola and Humberto Tavira.

Individual gold medals in algebra went to Kevin Nguyen, Daniel Cheng, Daniel Lee, Nicholas Pung, Amy Tsou and Jesus Villegas.

The schools and their team advisers are: Cedarlane, Patrick Chang; Mesa Robles, Norm Gustafson, Jean Hamabe and May Chen; Newton, Cindy Rosa and Jennifer Su; Orange Grove, Brian Mahaffey; Premier, Jeffrey Chen.

The remaining schools and their coaches are Sierra Vista, Ana Zambrano and Veronica Jefferson; Sunset Elementary, Juliet Elder; Torrance Chinese School, Matthew Ting; and Workman Elementary, Dale Reyes.