Jennifer Anderson

Math team at state.

On April 26, North’s Math team attended the state competition at Illinois State University. Thirteen students competed at the competition, and multiple team and individual placements were achieved. This year, the team sent an oralist to state for the first time as well as had their highest placement of a team at the competition.

Math team spends all year preparing for competitions. They attend many competitions throughout the year before they compete in the regional competition, which determines state qualifiers. They work together to solve problems, make their way through practice packets and take practice tests to prepare them for all their competitions, including regionals and state.

The freshman and sophomore eight-person team took second place, the highest ever finish for North. The team comprised freshmen Hayden Bastian, Dominic Zhu, Riya Shah and Zoe Zars, and sophomores Ania Smith, Atharv Sood, Henry Hodge and Devan Chigurupati.

Two teams placed fifth in state. The freshman Algebra I team, including Bastian, Ved Bhagat, Riya Shah, Zhu, Zars and Aarush Parikh, and the sophomore Geometry team, including Hodge, Smith, Sood, Arpan Shah, Talha Hasan and Chigurupati. Additionally, Hodge placed seventh in Geometry as an individual competitor.

“We’ve never had an oralist make it to state yet, so that was very special and unique,” said Jennifer Anderson, math team advisor.

The oralist competition is a unique part of math team’s road through regionals and state.

“Most of the competitions for math team are simply your standard math tests, where you’re just answering questions where the oralist competition is a little bit different. You have 15 minutes to answer a set of questions, and after that 15 minutes, you’re shown to a group of judges. And they judge you based on your presentational skills as well as your math. They give you points for what you’re getting right mathematically, what work you have, but they’re also giving you points for how well you write and how well you’re speaking to the audience. It’s very presentational,” said Evan Reck, math team captain and oralist competitor.

Preparing for this event has some similarities to other events, but it does have some big differences. Since competitors have to present to judges, they need to have deep understanding of the concepts at hand.

“You’re not just having to be able to write it down or solve a problem. You have to get to the level of knowledge where you can teach someone the problem,” said Reck.

The team hopes to continue and improve upon their successes in coming years. 

“Their success at the state tournament was exhilarating and a happy moment for them to see that their hard work has paid off,” said Anderson.