UNI HIGH’S MATHCOUNTS team finished second at the Champaign County regional competition Saturday at Everitt Lab on the University of Illinois campus.

Uni’s team consisted of subfreshmen Kathy Qiu, Kathleen Kohl, Charlie Bullock, and Sarah Yockey. Qiu and Kohl advanced to the state tournament, which will be held March 8 in Matteson. Math teacher Gene Bild is the team coach.

Last year’s team finished first at regionals, with four contestants finishing in the top six. Youyang Gu, now a freshman, went on to place 43rd at state individually. The 2005-06 team finished second at regionals and 13th at state.

MathCounts is a national mathematics coaching and competition program for middle school students.

Illinois, which has one of the largest MathCounts programs in the country, won the 2004 national championship with the help of Uni student Alex Zhai, now a senior.

Zhai has since gone on to represent the United States twice at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Each MathCounts competition consists of:

• a sprint round (40 minutes for 30 questions, calculators not permitted)
• a target round (about 30 minutes; eight problems presented in four pairs, each set of problems requiring several steps, calculators allowed)
• a team round (20 minutes; 10 problems that team members work together to solve, calculators allowed)
• a countdown round (a fast-paced oral competition in which one representative from each team squares off against a competitor from another team and has 30 seconds to come up with a correct answer, calculators not permitted)

Illinois has 270 registered member schools, with 19 active local chapters. Since the program began in 1983, more than 7 million students have participated nationwide.