Hi all,
Forgive the lengthiness, but when else does Math Team get to bask in the spotlight!? Scroll down if you want to cut to the chase.
Yesterday's math meet was the first held since 2019 - meaning this was the first time that any Maine student was able to attend this event in their high school career. Covid had quite an impact on the ability to gather students from all over the state in one space, but I am thrilled that the tides shifted enough this year to make our final competition a reality.
The day began with six individual rounds. Each round consists of students working their way independently through three problems with 12 minutes to solve. At the end of the individual rounds, our students had earned 396 points. That's more than any other team competing yesterday, regardless of division!
After lunch, the team participated in two relays. During this event, each student is handed a unique set of two problems. One is worked on throughout the duration of the 6 minute round, while the other must be tended to quickly so that the answer can be passed back to the team member sitting next in line. This "pass back" number then contributes to the second student's answer, which they must then pass back to the person behind them. This goes on until it reaches the last person, who ultimately records only their final answer. At the end, each student records their individual question's answer, but only the final relay answer gets recorded from all of the "pass back"s. As you can see, there are plenty of opportunities for mistakes to be made along the way. It is pretty hard to get a relay question correct, but our kids were one of just a handful who were able to get at least one of the relays correct yesterday!
The day concluded with two team rounds where the entire team had 12 minutes to work on eight problems from any topic in high school math (excluding calculus). This has been a strength of the team this year, and yesterday was no exception!
At the end of the day, our students earned the following accolades:
Audrey Alberts - named among the top 5 highest scoring 9th graders of the day
Vio Voltz - named among the top 12 highest scoring 11th graders of the day
Ainsley Fremont and Alex Scanlon - named among the top 15 highest scoring 12th graders of the day
For the regular season events that preceded yesterday, Cape was also recognized for earning the third highest score in the state, and Ainsley was also recognized for being among the top 10 highest scoring students over the course of the year.
And the big one..... after earning 509 points, the CEHS Math Team secured first place in Class B schools for their performance yesterday! I am not sure when (if ever) CEHS has won this accolade, but I can confirm that it has not occurred in at least the last 13 years of public record on the state math team website!
If you see any of these students, please congratulate them on this historic accomplishment, and give a shout out to any member of the math department who collectively prepared these kids for success!
Audrey Alberts
Ainsley Fremont
Neil Gabrielson
Zoe Matzkin
Trevor Oakley
Alex Scanlon
Logan Schwartz
Alex Thayer
Vio Voltz
Jack Wark
Sarah & Marija
Math Team Coaches