Nearly 90 middle school students converged in Ventura on Feb. 26 for the 28th annual Santa Barbara/Ventura chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition. Twins from Santa Barbara Family School and a La Colina Junior High School student were big winners at the event, which included schools from Goleta to Thousand Oaks.

The 86 middle school students had previously been selected by campus MATHCOUNTS competitions to represent their schools in the premier middle school mathematics competition in the nation. The annual event is sponsored by the nonprofit MATHCOUNTS Foundation in Washington.

The top-performing student from Santa Barbara County was second-place winner Julia Deacon, a homeschooler on the Santa Barbara Family School team coached by Skona Brittain. Only one point behind her were her twin brother, James Deacon, also a homeschooler on the Santa Barbara Family School team, and Josh Wang of the La Colina Junior High team coached by Ken Stevens.


In the tiebreaker, James won third place over Josh. James and Josh also met as finalists in the CountDown Round, an exciting game-show style event for the top 12 students, and this time Josh overpowered James to win the round.

The top 12 students at the competition were made up of half of the Santa Barbara Family School team, the entire La Colina Junior High team and half of the Goleta Valley Junior High team, which is coached by Nate Thompson. The top five teams also included these three Santa Barbara teams, with La Colina taking first place for the third consecutive year, Goleta Valley second place, and Santa Barbara Family School fifth place. Marissa Condie and Oliver Nguyen rounded out the Santa Barbara Family School team with the Deacon twins.

This year, three individuals and three teams advance from the MATHCOUNTS chapter level to the state level of the competition; in both cases, two of the three are from Santa Barbara and Goleta. Julia Deacon and James Deacon from Santa Barbara Family School are advancing as individuals, while the La Colina team (Josh Wang, Adam Dai, Peter Greig and Quinn Hensley) and the Goleta Valley team (John Grosen, Nicholas Katzen, Ryan O’Gorman and Brian Su) are advancing as teams.

The state MATHCOUNTS competition will be held March 19 at UC Irvine, and the top individuals in California then proceed to the 2011 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS national competition in May. National winners receive college scholarships and meet with President Barack Obama.