Tivitz Tournament at Michigan Tech

HOUGHTON — It’s tournament time at Michigan Tech! No, the basketball games are all done.

The 10th Annual Tivitz Tournament took place at the college campus, where more than 100 students in grades four through seven from seven Western Upper Peninsula schools competed in the board game that draws upon their math and logic skills.

MTU Center For Pre–College Outreach Event Coordinator Amanda McConnon said, “Tivitz is a math game.  It’s similar to checkers but you leave all your pieces on the board and you have to get them from one side to the other and at the end, there’s math equations using the numbers on the Tivitz, which are like dice, and you have to use math to figure out the answers and add up who has the most points.”

Michigan Tech’s Center for Pre–College Outreach partners with the Copper Country Intermediate School District to put on the tournament. And don’t let these kids know, but they are having fun doing math.

South Range Elementary sixth–grader Christian Hocking said, “It’s just fun to play other people in the Tivitz tournament.  When you get older you’re going to need to know math operations and everything for work and stuff.”

The fun coupled with the learning is what makes this event worthwhile.

McConnon said, “We’re teaching them strategy, a little bit of math, and they’re also working with people they might not know from a different school so they’re also having to meet new people.”