MILTON--It was so quiet you could probably hear a pin drop inside the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit in Milton. About 35 students spent the morning solving problems in a math competition featuring seven school districts.
"This is the Super Bowl of math for our kids from across the IU," John Kurelja said.
Students in grades four through eight squared off in this regional competition.
"The kids in there are high-caliber in terms of what they're doing and how quickly they're able to do it," Kurelja said.
The game is called "24 Game". The students have to add, subtract, multiply and divide the numbers on this card to get to the number 24. It sounds easy but it's not.
"It's more about memory than it is about actual math. If you remember the cards and the numbers it's more that than it is math," Trey Wagner said.
"It was a little nerve-wracking. I was a little nervous coming into it but it was exciting," Maryanna Betterly said.
Maryanna Betterly and Trey Wagner were finalists in their age group. Betterly won first place, and although she is only in eighth grade at Berwick Area Middle School, she tells Newswatch 16 this is good preparation.
"I've been thinking about majoring in math in college," Betterly said.
Both students went to the "24 Challenge" state competition last year.
"It's really exciting. My teacher told me just to have fun today and that's what I was trying to do," Wagner said.
"It's so important for us to offer kids a chance to shine in different ways. So here you have academics and math in particular where the kids are just superstars," Kurelja said.
Many of these students also qualified for this year's "24 Challenge" state competition, which is later this year in Harrisburg.