May 17, 1999
The Massachusetts state MATHCOUNTS team was crowned United States champions on Friday, May 14 at the OMNI Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C.
Evagrio Mosca, coach of the Diamond Middle School math and MathCounts teams, was the team's coach. Norton Levy, coach of the Concord Middle School math and MathCounts teams, served as assistant coach. David's coaches, Pat Dailey and Sandy Cardello, also assisted. Mrs.Donovan always brought plenty of goodies to the practices.
The team worked tirelessly over the past two months to prepare for this prestigious contest. The students each week worked on a former national competition. During the time between practice sessions, they worked on Warm-ups and Work-outs from previous years' handbooks. It is estimated that each student solved about 4000 problems over the past eight weeks!
More impressively, they functioned beatifully as a team. They learned each others' strengths and weaknesses. They enjoyed one anothers' sense of humor and friendship. It was this strong sense of teamwork which eventually paid off at the national competition, where team Massachusetts catapulted to the top during the team round, having earned the only perfect score among the 56 teams!
Individually, Mark Lipson tied for second place after the written rounds, and finished 4th overall. The others all finished in the top 20% of all competitiors.
At the conclusion of the event, each of the team members was presented with a gold medal, as the musical theme from the Olympic Games was played. They and the coach were then surrounded by members of the media - TV, radio, and newspaper reporters, each wanting to know everything about these extraordinary mathletes from Massachusetts. They were all then whisked away to a special media room, where each took turns doing telephone interviews with USA Today, the Washington Post, Fox News, and several Boston Newspapers.
On Saturday night, they were all honored yet again at the awards banquet, a formal affair which was held in the main ballroom of the hotel - the very same ballroom where every United States president has been honored at his inaugural ball on the night of his inauguration. Each Massachusetts team member received the national champion's trophy, $2000, a week at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and a laptop computer presented to them by a representative from the Microsoft Corporation. Coach Mosca also received a laptop computer.
The entire math league congratulates its four mathletes on their amazing accomplishments. They serve as excellent models for what can be accomplished with hard work, perseverence, setting high goals, and having a passion for whatever it is you want to do in life.
March 10, 1999
This was another exciting year for Diamond! The team of Liz Marcil, Steve Johnson, Mark Lipson, Tsubasa Takizawa, and alternate Bo Zhu came in first place at this year's Greater Boston Metropolitan Chapter at the Chelsea Middle School, and then won the State Competition a month later by a wide margin. Eighty-seven schools in Massachusetts participated this year.
Half of the state team this year consists of Diamond students - Mark Lipson and Liz Marcil! The rest of the team is: Adam Donovan from the Brooks School in Lincoln, and David Kim from the Fay School in Southborough. The team meets once each week in Mr. Mosca's room to practice for the national finals, which will be held on May 13 in Washington, D.C.
Congratulations to all, and to Liz and Mark as they join the Massachusetts State team and pursue a national title!
