North’s Math Team placed seventh in the Algebra I team competition and eighth in the freshman-sophomore two-person competition at the state competition on April 6.
Freshmen Ania Smith, Arpan Shah, Kieran Edwards, Atharv Sood, Talha Hasan and Devan Chigurupati competed on the Algebra I team. Smith and Sood also participated in the freshman-sophomore two-person competition.
“You can have any combination of [ages] as long as they are either freshmen or sophomores,” said Math Team adviser Dina Johnson. “So our freshman-sophomore two-person team actually consisted of two freshmen.”
Sophomores Nour Belhandouz and Vincent Lin, junior Alyssa Watanagongse and seniors Keshav Gupta and Max Fang also qualified for state based on their scores at the regional competition in February. Junior Evan Reck competed in place of Gupta in the junior-senior two-person competition as Gupta was unable to attend the state competition.
At state, Math Team members either took an individual test on a specific subject in math based on their grade – for example, the freshmen took individual tests on Algebra and their cumulative scores were the seventh best in the state – or answered questions as a two-person team, earning points based on how fast they can find the correct answer.
Math Team also competed in the North Suburban Math League throughout this year, where they took first place in their division and were named most improved team. The freshman team placed first in their grade for the division, the sophomore team placed second for their grade, the juniors placed third and the seniors placed fourth.
“[The North Suburban Math League] was throughout the entire year,” said Johnson. “It is one meet each month. There are five meets total, so then you have a cumulative score.”
Fang received the John Benson award from the NSML, an award given to seniors who have been in Math Team for four years based on their involvement in math competitions and enthusiasm for math.
“In my recent memory as a coach, I can only think of one other student from St. Charles North that’s won the award, so it’s a really big deal,” said Johnson.
Johnson said that the COVID pandemic hurt the team’s ability to bring in new underclassmen; however, this direction is starting to reverse.
“We had a lot of freshmen come out this year that have been really consistent with their participation and doing a great job,” said Johnson.
