Students from Rainbow Elementary School forfeited their last weekend of spring break for great returns at the Cullman Middle School Math Tournament.

The tournament had fifth- and sixth-grade categories and divisions for large, medium and small schools, team coach and Rainbow fifth-grade teacher Julie Goldston said. Rainbow competed in the large-school division.

Alan Grissom was the only Rainbow student competing in the sixth-grade category. “I told Alan before the tournament that he couldn’t be competitive as a team with only one member but that couldn’t stop him from getting a first-place individual trophy. He did just that,” Goldston said.

Grissom also achieved a perfect score and correctly answered all three tiebreakers. “Shantanu Kadam from Madison Elementary School also had a perfect score, so they shared first place,” Goldston said. “Cullman decided not to break the tie with a sudden-death problem.”

For fifth-grade individual awards, Aditi Limaye and Corey Tolbert tied for first place. “They both had perfect scores and had three tiebreakers correct,” Goldston said. “Cullman is ordering an additional trophy for them.”

Due to the Limaye-Tolbert tie, Joe Shen received third place. Tony Tian received fourth place and Victoria Lee took sixth. Other fifth-graders at the tournament were Connor Grant, Michael Guthrie and Arnav Mathur.

In addition, the Rainbow fifth-graders earned the first-place team trophy and exceeded the second-place team by a significant margin.

“Rainbow officially scored 488 points from 500 points possible,” Goldston said. “They managed this because the top four scores on the individual tests were 100, 100, 95 and 95. They were credited with a ciphering score of 98 out of 100.”

“That’s especially amazing since the second highest ciphering score was 61,” she said. Goldston believes the team actually earned a perfect score for ciphering.

“Congratulations to our participants and a special thank you to Kim Grissom for acting as coach, since I wasn’t able to be at this tournament,” Goldston said. “The kids and parents represented our school and system tremendously well.”