'MATHLETES' FLEX MENTAL MUSCLES IN COMPETITION\2 of 6 Valley schools advance.

Byline: Virginia Gonzalez Daily News Staff Writer

Natalie Stern isn't just a math student - she's a mathlete.

On Saturday, she butted brains and crunched numbers with about 50 other junior high school students from six San Fernando Valley schools in the 13th Annual Mathcounts Competition.

Among the brain teasers:

Find the number such that the sum of its half, its double and its third is 34. (The answer: 12.)

Confounding to many, but a welcome challenge for Natalie.

"I like numbers and plugging them into equations," said the student at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood. "I call this fun."

The competition was held in an engineering classroom at Cal State Northridge. Winners will compete at the state finals March 9 at the University of California, Irvine.

From there, winners will compete in the national finals in Washington, D.C., in May.

"We sponsor this competition to get kids interested in math - for engineering, for life," said Norman Barron, the San Fernando Valley Mathcounts coordinator.

Natalie's team of four and their counterparts from John Muir Middle School in Burbank defeated teams from The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, La Canada High School, Our Lady of Grace Elementary School in Encino and Placerita Junior High School in Newhall.

On the Reed team were Stern, Brandon Ashe, Jeffrey Zira and Melvin Chu. On the Muir team were Brendan Jennings, Andrew Chon, Joan Lee and Eugene Shin.

Four runners-up from two of the losing teams also advance in the competition, based on their scores. The students - also called all-stars - are Matthew Waymost and Michael Lalezarian from Buckley and Dan Monteleone and Tracy Hsu from Placerita.

The casually clad competitors answered five rounds of math questions - on paper and aloud - with each team's teacher supervising.

During a halftime juice break, eighth-grader Leo Natanian said he gives math the highest priority in his studies.

"Math is the future key to everything," said Leo, 13. "That's why I've been working harder than all my other subjects except for English."

Others around him excitedly chattered about the competition and expressed relief that the day they had trained so hard for had finally come.

"I've been excited for the past six months," said Reed alternate Tyler Rubin. "We've been competing over and over again (and) it's been very intense."

Danielle Shulman, another Reed alternate, said she was excited to make the competition at all because Reed - a mathematics magnet - has produced many gifted mathematicians, including her older brother, who ranked second in the nation in Mathcounts about two years ago.

Mathletes prepare rigorously for the competition throughout the academic year. Aside from studying competition handbooks, many students practice with their math clubs during lunch and after school.

Jeff Kass, math teacher and team coach at Placerita, said his students reviewed lessons and mock tests every Monday after school.

Reed math teacher and coach William Fitzgibbon said his students have made the national competition several times over the years, and his team members - all of whom have IQs over 145 this year - simply enjoy the subject as if it were a hobby.

"I don't have to push," Fitzgibbon said. "They just love math."

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Photo Calculating students crunch difficult numbers in Saturday's Mathcounts event at Cal State Northridge. Hans Gutknecht/Daily News