Yogeshwar Velingker, an eighth-grade student at Orefield Middle School, was the first-place winner in Pennsylvania's state Mathcounts competition March 23 at the Sheraton Harrisburg-Hershey Hotel.

Yogeshwar replicated a feat he accomplished in 2012 as a seventh grader.

The math master was the high scorer in the written round and then won the countdown round, a Jeopardy-style face off.

He will be among the 224 final Mathletes from 50 states, U.S. territories, state department schools and Department of Defense school to compete in the 2013 Raytheon Mathcounts National Competition May 10 at the Marriott, Washington, D.C.

The competition will be webcast at mathcounts.org.

On Feb. 10, Yogeshwar took first place in the Lehigh Valley Mathcounts Regional Competition at Trexler Middle School, Allentown.

This gave him the right to compete in Harrisburg against 162 other individual Pennsylvania Mathletes who were high-scorers in 25 regional competitions.

Another Lehigh Valley Mathcounts competitor, Daniel Qian, an eighth grade student at Southern Lehigh Middle School, placed 23rd overall at the state championship.

Mathcounts is an initiative of the National Society of Professional Engineers to encourage math literacy among middle school students to help prepare youngsters for highly technical 21st Century professions.

This was the 29th annual Mathcounts competition organized by the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers for sixth, seventh and eighth grade students from Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon and Monroe counties.

In 2011, as a sixth grader, Yogeshwar also took first place in the Lehigh Valley competition.

Almost 6,000 schools nationwide participate in the competition co-sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a host of industries that see the importance of making math excellence as challenging, exciting, and prestigious as participation in sports.