The math team competed against Sharon, Dover Sherborn, Medway, Dedham, and Norfolk Aggie on Thursday, February 7 at home. Each town has two teams with five players per team. Each mathlete chooses three out of a possible five rounds to compete in to earn points for their team. Every participant gets an individual score for the three events that he or she competes in, but their points are also all combined to give the team as a whole a final score. Each mathlete gets to choose the catagories that they want to participate from a wide range of mathematical subjects: arithmetic, algebra I, geometry, algebra II, and trig and advanced topics. Every round has three problems that progressively increase in point value from one point for the first question, two points for the second question, and three points for the third and final question in the normal round. At the end of the normal round there is a team round where every problem is worth double the points it was worth in the individual round before it.
When the final score were tallied from the individual and the team round in all five of the catagories, Walpole took third place with a score of 81 behind Sharon, who came in first place, and Dover Sherborn, who came in second. Despite the outstanding performances by junior Mikey Van Der Linden, who was the top scorer on the Walpole team with a final individual score of 13 points, and freshman Kevin Xia, who was recognized as a top scoring freshman with a total of 8 points, the team was unable to snatch a victory in their final meet of the season, settling for a respectable third place.
With this meet being the math team’s last competition of the year, third place was no disappointment as expressed by junior Brian Hazerjian, who said, “Coming in third place is a nice way to end the season.” The team ended the year in tenth place out of 35 teams, narrowly missing tournament once again. Although their season is done for this year, most of the points for the team came from juniors, sophomores, and freshman, which is a good sign that the team will do just as well if not better next year.
