HART SCORES MATH HONORS SCHOOL EARNS SECOND PLACE.

Byline: Marci Wormser Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Desert High School at Edwards Air Force Base and Quartz Hill High School defeated 12 other high schools Friday for top honors in Antelope Valley College's 23rd Annual Math Field Day.

Quartz Hill's three-person team of juniors and seniors won among large schools and Desert won among small schools in two divisions of the competition. Students from 14 public and private high schools competed for individual and team awards in timed math tests.

Quartz Hill's team members - Yul Yang, Eli Parkinson and Pareen Mehta - scored 173 out of a possible 300 points. Desert High School's junior and senior team members - Alianne Steffenson, James Stewart and Cody Lewis - scored 134 points.

Desert High's victory was its 10th consecutive win in the small-school category.

Placing second in the large-school competition was Valencia's Hart High School, whose team members - Anna Hiszpanski, Robert Matei and William Kuykendall - scored 169.

Taking second place in the junior-senior small-school competition was Paracelete High, whose team members - Michael Pipo, Ryan Hano and Connie Pheng - scored 117.

The college has sponsored the event since 1981 to raise teens' interest in math.

``Everything we do is based in math,'' said Antelope Valley College math instructor Kathryn Pletsch, who co-chaired the competition. ``The problem is some kids don't think it's cool to go into math. ... In order for our country to go forward in technology, we need mathematicians.''

The individual competition winners were: Hart sophomore William Kuykendall, who scored 75 points; Summer Banks, a junior at Ridgecrest's Burroughs High School who scored 72 points; and Hart senior Matei, who scored 65 points.

Kuykendall, who is enrolled in a junior honors precalculus class, was chosen by his math teacher to compete among juniors and seniors because of his math aptitude. The teen will enroll at College of the Canyons to take Calculus II when he is a senior.

Math is his easiest subject but he did not think he would be the top scorer in the competition, Kuykendall said.

``At the beginning, most of the questions were pretty easy, but they got harder and harder,'' he said. ``I thought I did pretty well, but I didn't think I would win.''

Banks, who is enrolled in advanced placement calculus, said she was surprised by her second-place finish because she did not answer all the questions during the 90-minute test.

``I didn't answer all of them, but all the ones I answered I got right,'' she said.

Matei, who will attend Stanford University in the fall, said he wasn't sure he would do well on the test because he had not taken a math course in a couple of months. He completed a Calculus III course last semester.

``It took me a few minutes to warm up, but I didn't think I'd win a prize,'' the Hart High student said.

This year's math competition was sponsored by Lockheed Martin and Antelope Valley College. High school students' math teachers choose who will compete. Most competitors are members of their high schools' 'mathlete' teams, in which they compete in math competitions each month, according to Antelope Valley College math professor Chuck Ferrari. Ferrari served as the master of ceremonies at Friday's event.

In the junior-senior team competition, each member completed 20 questions involving a range from algebra to pre-calculus.

The two-member freshman and sophomore teams each answered 22 questions in a ``leap-frog relay'' for a 110-point maximum score. Partners traded papers during the test, allowing each student to finish a partner's work or correct mistakes.

In the freshman-sophomore competition, Highland High School students Daniel Sitz and Jeff Susca finished first in the large-school competition with 96 points. Quartz Hill High's team of Neal Patel and Travis Maag took second place with 66 points.

Small-school freshman-sophomore first place winners were Desert High's Kaitlin Kirk and Ryan Hines with 93 points. Second place went to Paraclete's David Strachnik and Nick Faino with 91 points.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) From left, Quartz Hill High School students Pareen Mehta, Eli Parkinson and Yul Yang show their school's trophy.

(2 -- ran in AV edition only) Desert High students, from left, James Stewart, Alianne Steffenson and Cody Lewis scored a victory in the Math Field Day.