On 2/3/2024, I competed in the MathCounts Chapter Competition, along with the likes of Kevin Long, Jay Fang, and Alan Ma. I believe I scored a 27/30 on the Sprint Round and a 14/16 on the Target Round, which puts my score at 41/46 in total.
This score was enough to place me at 9th out of ~330 competitors, and qualify into the next round, the Countdown Round. To break it down, I was pretty happy about my Sprint Round score, and I had a good feeling afterwards, which is usually good. My hopes only increased when I got a fairly good Target Round score, but I wasn't sure how everyone else did at this point in time.
Next we had the Team Round, which I was a part of thanks to being Captain. I think we may have "sold" on this round, because when I asked about problem 10, I got two distinct answers from my teammates, and I ended up putting down the wrong one (oops). We got problems 8 and 10 wrong, in the end, and finished with a rather disappointing score of 8/10 in the Team Round.
I knew that in years past, a score of 41/46 would typically land me in the top 10, but I knew standards grew higher as years progressed, so I didn't get my hopes up. I was also pretty convinved that an 8/10 on the Team Round would pretty much bury our chances of making States as a team.
I spent my lunch thinking about my chances on making the Countdown Round, playing video games, drinking Red Bull for the first time (it was 100% in case I made Countdowns and nothing else). I also ate a salad, and toured the college campus that it was held at (MCCC). My wonderful coaches brought food and snacks such as Oreos, and we were able to relax a bit (because experience says that being too tense is not good for speed competitions).
When the Countdown Round qualifiers came out, I heard my name called second (it's called in reverse order, aka from 10th place to 1st place), and it felt great. Imagine having like 300+ competitiors and their parents clapping for you. I'm going to be honest, they were mostly Chinese and Indian, and in the Asian community, suceeding at math at this level is a pretty big accomplishment, especially when so many people recognize it. Two of my teammates also made the Countdown Round. I went up against #10 first, and I beat him 2-1 in the best-of-3 Countdown Round format (my AoPS FTW skills paying off big time). I then lost the next round, but I did better than I expected, at least winning a single round in the Countdown Round. We missed out on a team round trophy (because we sold), and didn't win a 'triangle', the iconic MathCounts trophy ... but it's all good because I was able to beat quite a few AIME qualifiers, and that's always good.
Overall, MathCounts was a 95/100 in terms of being an event, the only thing that could be better is that if we won the Team Round (well obviously). But in all seriousness, MathCounts has been a really nice competition for the last three years at least, and I'll certainly miss it next year.
