MATTESON — Led by Edo Roth's top 10 individual performance, the Uni MathCounts team placed fourth at Saturday's state finals.

The team consisted of Roth and fellow subfreshmen Chelsea Edwards, Henry Carlton, and Max Sigalov. They were accompanied by alternate Yulun Wu and individual competitor Patrick Wong.

Uni competed in a field of 88 teams. Roth led all Uni "mathletes" by placing ninth out of 302 competitors. That was the highest individual Uni finish at state since Alex Zhai came in second in 2004.

Math teacher Gene Bild is team coach.

"I suggest that their classmates should shower them with money and chocolate and their teachers excuse them from homework for the remainder of the semester," Bild remarked in a schoolwide e-mail announcing the results.

MathCounts is a national mathematics coaching and competition program for middle school students. It begins at the school level, then moves to the regional and state levels, culminating in the national finals.

The Uni squad won the Champaign County Chapter regional contest Feb. 14 at Everitt Lab on the University of Illinois campus.

Last year's team placed second at the regional contest, with Kathy Qiu and Kathleen Kohl advancing to the state tournament. Qiu finished in the top 25 percent at state, 50th overall.

No one from Uni will move on to the national competition, which is scheduled for May 7-10 at Walt Disney World's Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Fla. Only the four top-scoring individuals and the top team coach advance from each state.

Illinois, which has one of the largest MathCounts programs in the country, won the 2004 national championship with the help of then-subfreshman Zhai, who graduated in 2008 and is now a freshman at Harvard.

Zhai finished ninth in the country as a subbie. He went on to represent the United States three times at the International Mathematical Olympiad, tying for first place at last summer's IMO.

Each MathCounts competition consists of four rounds:

• Sprint round — 40 minutes for 30 questions, calculators not permitted
• Target round — about 30 minutes for eight problems presented in four pairs, each set of problems requiring several steps, calculators allowed
• Team round — 20 minutes for 10 problems that team members work together to solve, calculators allowed
• Countdown round — a fast-paced oral competition in which top-scoring individuals square off against each other and the clock (45 seconds to come up with a correct answer), calculators not permitted

The Illinois Society of Professional Engineers sponsors the state program, which has about 270 schools in 20 local chapters. Since the program began in 1983, more than 7 million students have participated nationwide.