FLEXING THEIR GRAY MATTER MATHLETES SQUARE OFF IN THREE-DAY BATTLE OF NUMBERS.

Byline: CHARLES F. BOSTWICK Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Eighth-graders from Joe Walker Middle School and Sacred Heart School took top honors Thursday at the 18th annual Antelope Valley Junior Mathletes Tournament, which drew hundreds of youngsters to try their knowledge at solving math problems far beyond their grade levels.

Joe Walker eighth-grader Nithya Kubendran won the Chuck Stoll Award trophy and $250 as the student with the best cumulative score over three years of competition that involved solving problems in geometry, algebra and probability, as well as arithmetic.

``They're not that difficult. Our teachers prepare us. They give us practice tests,'' said Nithya, whose father is an engineer and program manager for AS&M at Edwards Air Force Base and whose mother is a dietician.

Along with the $250, Nithya gets to take the Chuck Stoll Award trophy to her school, which will keep it for a year. The award is named for the high school mathematics teacher who started the annual contest to encourage middle school youngsters to take an interest in math.

The competition drew some 600 students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades from 21 public and private schools, and it was held over three days in the Knight High School gymnasium.

Games and prize presentations were interspersed with math problems for 2 1/2 hours on each of the three days. Students competed both individually and in teams by grade level.

In the eighth-grade competition, Joe Walker Middle School in Quartz Hill took top honors for teams from large schools, winning both first and third places. New Vista Middle School from Lancaster placed second and Challenger Middle School in Lake Los Angeles took fourth.

Among small-schools teams of eighth-graders, Sacred Heart School in Lancaster took first and second places; Edwards Middle School at Edwards Air Force Base took third. St. Mary's School in Palmdale took fourth place.

The top individual score for an eighth-grader from a small school was earned by Tommy Mallick of Sacred Heart. His counterpart in large schools was Nithya, from Joe Walker.

In the seventh-grade team competition among large schools, Tropico Middle School in Rosamond took first, while Sacred Heart won among small schools.

The top individual seventh-grade scorers were Ian Conaway of Joe Walker among large schools, and Lucio Celeste of Sacred Heart among small schools.

Alpine School in Littlerock won the sixth-grade team competition among small schools. Challenger won the sixth-grade competition among large schools.

The top individual sixth-grade scorers were Dalton Banh of New Vista among large schools and Veronica Cruz of St. Mary's among small schools

Students lunched on pizza provided by contest sponsor Pandelis Chryssostomides, a Lancaster financial planner. Chryssostomides, who has been helping the math contest for years, also provided prizes for the youngsters and the trophies.

TEST YOUR INNER MATHLETE

So kids nowadays aren't learning as much in school as you did? Here are some problems posed to eighth-graders in the Junior Mathlete competition at Knight High School. Answers are at the bottom.

1. Among all possible pairs of prime numbers with the sum of 100, what is the largest product?

2. Blake remembers only the first five digits of a seven-digit phone number, but he is sure that neither of the last two digits is zero or one. If he dials the first five digits, then dials two more digits, each chosen at random from the numbers other than zero or one, what is the probability that he will dial the correct number?

3. The smallest possible number of Thursdays in a 65-day period is what?

4. There are 120 red marbles and 80 blue marbles in a bag that contains 200 marbles. If only blue marbles are to be added to the bag so that the probability of randomly drawing a blue marble becomes 3-in-5, how many blue marbles must be added to the bag?

Answers: 1. 2,491; 2. 1-in-64; 3. 9; 4. 100.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Challenger Middle School mathlete team members Gloria Monales, 13, left, Cheryl Mitchell, 13, and Rebecca Tummers, 14, work on a math problem Thursday at the 18th annual Antelope Valley Junior Mathletes Tournament in Palmdale.

(2 -- color) Joe Walker Middle School took home first prize in the eighth-grade large-school mathletes competition. From left, Auston Cherboneaux, Nick Fedorko, Nithya Kubendran, Sean Knight and Tyrus Tenneson pose with their winnings.

(3 -- color) Sacred Heart School's eighth-grade mathlete team -- from left, Shanes Abeywardena, Tommy Mallick, Carissa Hayes, Sam Harbison and Alyssia Plata -- poses with its first place awards in the small-school competition.

(4 -- color) Ably navigating through geometry, algebra and probability questions, Nithya Kubendran of Joe Walker Middle School won the Chuck Stoll Trophy for the best cumulative score over three years of competition at the Antelope Valley Junior Mathletes contest held at Knight High School.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

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TEST YOUR INNER MATHLETE (see text)