The Old Hammondtown School Math Olympiad team has wrapped up its second year with top scores in a national competition.

OHS math tutor Linda Aruri is the advisor for the team, which had 21 fifth and sixth grade students this year.

"They did a fabulous job," said Aruri. "The students on the team really get into it."

The Math Olympiads for Elementary Middle Schools program is a nonprofit organization that works to enrich students' math education.

From October to March, OHS students met every Tuesday after school to practice.

"It's all problem solving to challenge them. It's very mind provoking problems," said Aruri.

She said many of the skills the students learn have not been covered in their math classes yet, but the teammates help each other figure out solutions to the challenges.

Once a month from November to March, the students took a math test, administered by Aruri. She then sent the results to Math Olympiads, where they were calculated along with the scores of students in about 80,000 other schools.

The tally of all the tests was sent to OHS this week and showed that the team scored in about the 26th percentile among other teams in the same age group.

The top score on each test was 25, and when their scores were averaged, 12 students scored in the top 40 percent of the exams.

Marc Pothier was the high scorer on the team for the sixth grade and Sam Balsis and Sam Newton tied in the fifth grade.

Sixth graders Pothier, Jake Louden and Ethan Perez-Dormitzer scored in the top 10 percent of the exam.

Aruri said the team loves math, and she plans to keep the team going next year.