Excerpt from this week’s electronic progress report:

Total possible points for Mathlympics 1st 9 weeks was 55. Congratulations to Claire Cashel who had a class high with 52 points. — Ms. W

Each week, Claire’s math teacher hands out a sheet of 5 problems that are part of “Mathlympics”. With the final 9 week progress report, it looks like Claire is going to win.

Most of these word problems are pretty tough. Kathy quickly resigned from the coaching position, and recruited me to be the math coach. Reminds me of when Danny’s throws got too hard for Kathy to help him warm up. Claire and I will work on 2 or 3 problems two or three nights after she has done all of her homework. The sheet is due each Friday.

I help Claire think about the problem and think of ways she could solve the problem without doing the problem myself. Ms. W. provides clues mid-week, but Claire tries not to use those. Instead she works the problem until she gets and answer. She then looks to see if the clue is similar to the way she solved it. We’ve spent as much as 20 minutes on some of these problems.

As the weeks have gone by, she has gotten quicker and better at solving the problem and understanding any suggestions I give. In fact, on this last round, she solved one problem before I even had an idea of what the answer would be. (She bragged about this to her mom.)

From 50 whole numbers, 1 to 50 inclusive, choose the X and Y that will make the largest fraction:

X + Y

Kelly competed in her second cross-country meet determined to finish and she did! This event was at the Olympic horse park in Conyers and included some hills and woods. It was very crowded and the meet got behind, so the JV girls passed the time giving each other massages in a giant circle.

Kelly paced herself better this time, and at the 1 mile mark I was able to snap a picture of her smiling:

She was feeling pretty good at the 2 mile mark as the course went from open field into the woods. She liked running in the woods because it was in the shade and it felt more isolated. It helped to be isolated when at the 2.5 mile mark her stomache became so sloshy she had to throw up. She didn’t have any food in her because she had not eaten anything for breakfast and reported being very hungry before the race.

She quickly recovered and finished the race very determined to finish (and not throw up again.) This is a photo of her approaching the finish line, and as you can see, she is ahead of everyone behind her.

The next photo shows her on the left crossing the finish line including a “zoom” of the time clock showing 26 min 36 sec, which is her best time for a 3 mile run. After finishing she had to bend over and throw up again, so this is a pretty rough sport. (Other girls throw up before the race because they are nervous!) However, unlike her last meet Kelly was back up and quite chatty and very happy about her race. The two of us went to a waffle house (her choice), and she ordered a table full of food.