Connor LaMarca and Aiden McCarthy rise to top in math contest

MILFORD — Are you smarter than an advanced eighth-grade honors math student? There are two middle schoolers at Dingman-Delaware Middle School you probably can't beat.
Mrs. Stacy DeFrancesco coached seventh-graders Connor LaMarca and Aiden McCarthy at this year’s Math Counts competition, which presents five-second mental math challenges and more lengthy problems, including ratios, proportions, quadratics, and advanced algebra.
Connor made it into the Top 10 Countdown round and placed sixth out of 100 participants. He said the competition "works like 'Jeopardy.'"
Teammate Aiden said, “I get being good at math from my grandfather.” He hopes to use this natural skill one day when he serves in the Armed Forces.
Mrs. DeFrancesco believes Connor has the ability to make it to the state round of competition next year.
Connor wants to pursue an engineering career and expressed particular interest in model-building for NASA aeronautics.