By Jonathan M. Hicap
Three Filipino students bagged medals at the 22nd Junior Balkan Mathematical Olympiad (JBMO) held from June 19 to 24 in Rhodes, Greece.
According to the Mathematics Trainers Guild-Philippines (MTG), Daryll Carlsten Ko of St. Stephen’s High School and Sean Eugene Chua of Xavier School were awarded silver medals while Deanne Gabrielle Algenio of Makati Science High School bagged a bronze medal in the competition.
The three, accompanied by team leader Kerish Villegas, represented the country to the JBMO, wheren they competed with entries from Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France, Greece, Republic of Moldova, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and Turkmenistan.
“We congratulate our three contestants for winning medals in the math competition. This is another honor for our country,” said Dr. Isidro Aguilar, president of MTG, which trains and sends Filipino students to compete in international mathematics contests.
“This year's JBMO was a mixture of managable and challenging problems. Some of them only required a direct flow of logic while the others needed very specific observations in order to advance in the problem,” said Ko.
According to Chua, “The competition tested our level of endurance, mental agility and perseverance to be able to approach the problems in the correct manner.”
Algenio said the problems were “challenging, brain provoking, mind boggling problems but nothing we Pinoy mathletes cannot hurdle.”