By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Mathletes of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics came back from the State Math Meet in Portland on April 5 with a shiny new piece of bling for their school’s trophy case after proving themselves the top team in the state.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
While some students try to wrap their brain around a question, medal-winning mathlete at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics Klaas Pruiksma had wrapped himself around his work, seemingly perched on a problem. The mathletes have been preparing every day for the upcoming math meet and hoping to come away with a win.
Winning States is no small feat and the mathletes trained pretty vigorously to get there; students attend practices to strengthen their mental muscles, they formulate strategies and are rather competitive when it comes to bringing home a victory.
And like any good team, they have a rival.
“Bangor,” all seven students at practice on Friday, April 15 said in unison, and they described how competition was fierce between the two schools.
The back-and-fourth between the two school’s scores is sequence worthy of its own montage; the teams battled all day, catching up to the leader, falling behind, pulling ahead and lagging once more; during the morning’s individual rounds the MSSM team had done really well, but relay challenges of the afternoon had the Limestone team’s spirits pretty down.
“We all kind of thought we’d lost it,” said student James Jelin.
“Well, second place,” corrected his fellow student Thomas Murphy.
The tension was palpable as the rankings were announced, starting from the bottom at last place of Division D and working up. Scores were named off until MSSM and Bangor were the only two schools left and the only titles remaining were first and second place.
MSSM coach and math teacher Pete Pederson was announcing the winners, and was all too aware of how charged the atmosphere was leading up to the announcement of the Division A winner … so he made sure to include a thirty second pregnant pause before announcing the second place winner.
“That whole day I was like ‘we lost, we got destroyed,’” said student James Lee of Farmingdale. “Then they announced second place, and I though ‘here it comes,’ and then they said ‘Bangor.’”
To say there were smiles on the students faces as they recalled the moment when they found out Bangor had placed second is an understatement, and the mathletes didn’t have to plot any sort of vector or break out a calculator to respond when asked who jumped the highest when they’d realized their victory.
“Margaret,” they all said, describing how their teammate had jumped about eight feet in the air despite the fact that she’s on the shorter side and was wearing high heels.
MSSM students brought home seven top-medals from the State Math Meet — more than any other school.
Like any successful sports season, winning states means advancing to the next competition. The MSSM team will be attending the New England competition later this month and a few of the Limestone mathletes have been selected to participating side-by-side with other top minds of the state in the American Regions Math League (ARML) that’s also coming up soon.
Even though there’s still a long numeric road ahead for the MSSM team, they’re far from being mathed out.
All the students at the practice on April 15 agreed that they already find math to be fun, and adding a competitive aspect to it increases the excitement.
“It defiantly adds another level to it that I enjoy more, because you’re actually competing and working with everyone. There’s something about scrambling to finish up with minutes left and then changing you answer at the last second to get the question right,” Jelin described.
“It’s all better than just taking a test, where you’re just going after a grade,” Murphy added.
Until the math meet season is concluded, students will be willingly submersing themselves in number theory, algebra I, geometry, algebra II, coordinate geometry, trigonometry and imaginary/complex numbers.
Pouring over numbers may seem to be an atypical extracurricular activity for a group of teenagers, but these students find the challenges that come with competitively vying for mathematical supremacy among their peers to be highly rewarding and right up their alley.
After all, when this reporter asked if any of the students were interested in pursuing a career that didn’t involved math, students took on quizzical expressions until one mathlete pointed out the question’s fatal flaw.
“Everything involves math.”
