By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

CALVARY Christian Academy won its first Mathcounts championship title on Saturday, dethroning perennial winner Marianas Baptist Academy.
“We’re really proud of our team,” said CCA teacher-coach Vanesa Pritchard during the award ceremony at the multi-purpose center in Susupe. “We’ve been practicing for this competition since October of last year and that’s a lot of hard work. Calvary Christian Academy has been working hard on this for the last couple of years. Every year, we try to improve and we’re happy that we’ve gotten a little closer each year and this year, we finally did it.”
Pritchard said CCA initially had 16 students for the competition.
“We started with 16 students, then we trimmed it down for the chapter contest until we had only eight left for this state competition,” she said.
CCA Team A bagged first place in the overall team category with 23 points while CCA Team B won third place with 16.25.
Defending champion MBA Team A ranked second with 21.75 points while its Team B ranked fourth with 14.75.
The four top individuals in this competition, will represent the CNMI in the national contest slated for May 10-13.
These are MBA’s So Young Lim, CCA’s Han Bert Jeong, Han Byol Yu, and Saipan International School’s Harry Jun.
The others in the top 10 are MBA’s Ye Bin Park and Sung Hoon Ham, So Hee Kwak, Chan Woo Lee, Hopwood Junior High School’s Edu Mari Banaag and CCA’s Ji Hoon Choi.
There were 23 teams with nearly 100 students from 13 public and private schools that participated in the contest.
According to MBA team coach and principal Ramir Trinidad, the school is very proud of its “mathletes.”
The MBA students have been training and practicing for Mathcounts since the beginning of the school year.
“We held the title for 13 years and we’re hoping we can do better next year,” Trinidad said, adding that they are extremely proud of So Young Lim for finishing first in the individual category.
“It’s her first time in the competition because she just moved here from Korea. But she emerged as the top winner and we’re proud of her,” Trinidad told Variety.
Two coaches will be chosen to join the CNMI students participating in the national competition.
”The coaches from the top winners in the team category will accompany the students this year and they are from CCA and MBA,” said chapter coordinator Guadalupe Sabino.
The 13th annual CNMI Mathcounts Commonwealth Championship Competition was organized by EFC Engineers & Architects and sponsored by Chong’s Corp., Coca-Cola Beverage Co., Deloitte, DFS Saipan Inc., EFC Engineers & Architects, Joeten Charitable Foundation, Microl Corp., Mobil Oil Marianas, National Office Supply, PTI, Rep. Ramon A. Tebuteb, Subway Investment, and UMDA Inc.