On Monday, March 12th, Abigail Getnick ‘26, Caleb Li ‘26, Amelia Dyrstad ‘28, Helen Liu ‘27, Calvin Mumma ‘28, Selena Qiao ‘26, Yuchen Shi ‘26, and Shivam Srivastava ‘28 suited up in their yellow math team shirts and marched through Spring Lake Park High School, their confidence echoing through the walls of the Minnesota High School Mathematics League State Championship.
After three tricky 15-minute events it was finally time for the team event, the most critical point in the tournament. They encountered functions so complex that even Yuchen couldn’t differentiate them, combinations so large that even Selena and Helen couldn’t calculate them…but they powered through, doing their best in this integral part of the competition.
After 30 minutes of finding the limit of their collective intellectual endurance (it’s DNE), they entered the auditorium for the awards ceremony, but not for long. A couple of minutes later, Coach Chambers emerged from the auditorium in his sunglasses, waving a massive trophy above his head while the math team stormed behind, medals in teeth, with dignity in their smiles. They had won 1st place in their division at the 41st annual Minnesota Mathematics League Championship!
Haven’t already heard of this amazing news? Not surprising—
Unfortunately, the math team remains largely ignored by the Breck student body, despite its ongoing success. Mathletes are constantly shoved out of the equation– treated like extraneous solutions. However, Breck remains one of the state’s strongest math teams, just tailing large public schools like Minnetonka. It remains that Breck’s reputation is derivative of our math team’s success.
This year, the math team met every Wednesday, as early as 7:45 am. At this time, our 20 mathletes engaged in mind-boggling questions that forced them to exercise problem-solving skills and think critically. Don’t worry– there is no calculus involved, equation sheets are provided, and all answers belong to ℤ. That is not to say, however, that math team practices are easy; sometimes things get so intense there is barely any time to eat Dave’s donuts. However, Breck’s math team is still a positive welcoming space of mutual support and collaboration. We encourage all those interested to join next year and help strengthen one of Breck’s strongest programs.
In the meantime, please congratulate your nearest math team member on their big win and consider joining next year. To put it in the words of mathlete Abigail Getnick, “In math team, our determination knows no bounds. That’s right, we do not converge.”
