Math is Cool Championships, WCA Competition, and MathCounts!
Last weekend was probably one of the most hectic in my life so far! On Friday, February 7, 2020, I, along with around 20 other students from Lakeside Middle School, went to Liberty High School in Renton, WA for the Math is Cool Championships.
I ended up performing pretty well at my first math competition of the year. I was able to achieve the best individual in school in my division, and all the 8th graders representing Lakeside received a 4th place team award!
My individiual award! 
The team awards!
Not only did I attend Math is Cool Championships last Friday, but there were also two competitions I was planning to go to the Saturday right after. One of which was a WCA (cubing) competition called Downtown Vancouver Winter 2020 in Vancouver, Canada, and the other was the MATHCOUNTS Seattle Chapter Competition. In the MATHCOUNTS competition, around 30 students at Lakeside were hoping to qualify for the competition, so the 30 of us had to take a series of tests, and only the top 10 students could attend the MATHCOUNTS competition. Attending MATHCOUNTS is quite a prestigious feat, especially at Lakeside, as math is so competitive. I was lucky enough to have obtained one of the top 10 competitor spots, and this was a first, so I was very excited!
Unfortunately, I really wanted to have gone to MATHCOUNTS, but because we already had plans to attend the Vancouver competition, we ended up going to that instead. Luckily, I did quite well at the WCA competition; I took home a WA State Record for 2×2 average (1.56 seconds!), and achieved PRs in both 3×3 One-Handed single and average (9.39 single, 12.52 average), both of which are currently second in WA!
All of my results from the Vancouver competition can be found here:
https://live.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/DowntownVancouverWinter2020/competitors/57