In grade-level math teams, 27 students participated in the Excellence in Mathematics Contest, at Forest Park Community College, on Nov. 7. Despite not sending the maximum of 10 students per grade, the teams placed in three out of four divisions, with the junior class taking home the first place title.

Sophomore Haran Kumar placed second of all tenth graders in the contest, leading the sophomore team, including Rachel Wang, Yash Nayak and Sophia Malpocker, to a fourth place finish.

“I did a practice test to study. [The test] doesn’t ask about problems that require a specific formula like a math test. It asks questions that require you to use creativity and problem solving. It was intense,” Kumar said, who was not happy with his placement. “Second place is the first loser.”

While the sophomore class’ success centered  around individual achievement, the combined effort of the junior team—Bobby Rein, Angela Tsao, George Liu and Kenji Yanaba—led them to be division champions. Rein placed fourth and Tsao took seventh place out of all juniors.

“I want to go into math or engineering so [contests like these] will definitely help. I did get some extra credit for this, but mostly I was competing to win,” junior Bobby Rein said.

Awards for the contest included two $1,000 scholarships for the seniors with the highest scores, and two randomly drawn scholarships to St. Louis Community Colleges for juniors or seniors.  Some students, like Kumar and Rein, competed in hopes of winning, but others chose to participate in the contest for extra credit.

“I’m in AP Calculus AB right now, and it is the hardest math class I have ever taken,” senior Shannon Anderson said. “Ms. Dean said she would give bonus points to people who did math contests so I immediately jumped on the opportunity. I had participated freshman year so it wasn’t completely foreign to me.”

The senior team—comprised of Shannon Anderson, Anthony Carroll, Crystal Luo and Nico Stranquist—won fourth place in their division. To be fair to all students, the contest was divided into two divisions per grade based on school size.

“There were girls in the front of the room who had obviously been preparing for a long time. There were also some jocks sitting in front of me from CBC that were saying that the first question was easy but they didn’t answer anything else. I guess I fell in the middle; I’m not completely clueless about math, but I also didn’t do anything to prepare,” said Anderson, “I was surprised that actual human beings could do some of those math questions.”

Students that participated in the contest came from schools across the region, from Lake of the Ozarks to O’Fallon, Illinois.

“The proctor from my room said that she had driven almost four hours on a bus with her students. I was impressed that she was that dedicated to math,” Anderson said.

The test took place in the late morning, so while officials were processing the tests, the West team went out to lunch and played football before returning to the awards ceremony at 1:00 p.m.. The test was out of 100 points and the top four scores from each grade were averaged to create a team score for each school.

“I answered 10 correctly and got 49 points out of 100,” Anderson said. “I was really proud though, because I answered number 18, which was the third hardest problem on the test.”

At the end of the day, the team took home three individual awards, two team awards and first place team title for the junior class. The math season is not over, contests continue after school for the rest of the semester. The American Math Competition will take place at West High on Feb. 2.

“The only way to acknowledge truth that is the meaning of all life and existence is through the pursuit of Mathematics,” Kumar said.