A Thomas County Central High School junior got to flex his mathematical muscle against some of the nation’s strongest minds.

Bret Hendricks earned the opportunity to attend the MathCON 2017 finals in Chicago this April. Hendricks took an online assessment and was the sixth-highest scoring junior in the southeast region, as well as the number one highest-scoring junior in Georgia.

“I was shocked that I scored high enough to qualify for the national tournament,” Hendricks said. “I wanted to go to see what the written test would be like, as well as tour Chicago.”

According to an official MathCON press release, Hendricks is one of only 576 students from the approximately 50,000 applicants across 43 states to qualify for the national competition.

TCCHS math teacher Darrin Minns was not a bit surprised that Hendricks did so well.

“He's a great competitor and one of the finest math minds I have ever had the pleasure to teach,” Minns said.

He calls MathCON, an annual competition hosted by Concept Schools, a gathering of “the best of the best competing at a very high level.” Students in middle and high school grade levels compete in various mathematical disciplines, including algebra, geometry, data analysis, and number systems.

“It is a chance to pit yourself against the finest young minds in the country and see how you stack up,” Minns said.

MathCON’s goal “is to engage students in STEM outside of the classroom, and encourage more students to enter the STEM fields…” according to the release.

“MathCON is our way of inspiring the future leaders in science, technology, math and engineering by engaging students at a young age, making STEM fun and demonstrating its real-world applications,” Ayhan Caputlu, director of mathematics education at Concept Schools, said in the release. “The competition allows us to reach students from all over the nation and help them establish, improve and maintain skills that can lead to many possibilities throughout their educational careers and beyond.”

Though Hendricks would like to have placed at the national level, he is still proud of his MathCON performance and said it was definitely a learning experience.

“The contest helped me learn things about math I would have never thought of before,” he said. “Some of the questions on the written test would appear like complete gibberish to regular students (and honestly some questions looked like gibberish to me as well). The written test definitely taught me things I wouldn't have learned in a traditional classroom.”

This year's event was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Various other activities took place during MathCON and Hendricks enjoyed the wide array of math-centric happenings.

“The movie ‘Hidden Figures’ was playing, and there was even a small tournament using the math game ’24,’” he said. “I thought it was amazing to be in the same room as some of the best math students around the nation.”

Minns said the event “was a wonderful experience for everyone involved.”