While most winter sports teams have just concluded their seasons, the Walpole High School Math Team also recently ended their season on Thursday, February 6, 2013. For their fourth and final meet, the math team hosted the Norfolk Aggie, Medway, Sharon, Dover-Sherborn and Dedham teams at Walpole High.
Heading into the final regular season meet, the team was in 10th place out of the 36 teams in the Southeastern Massachusetts Mathematics League. The top scorer for the meet, senior Mikey Van der Linden, received 14 out of a possible 18 points and was listed among the top scoring seniors for the division. The second highest scorer for the meet was senior Walter Rose.
Additional noteworthy performances also came from various other students as every competitor contributed to the team total. Senior Brian Hazerjian had a perfect score (6 points) in arithmetic, sophomore Kevin Xia had a perfect score in Algebra 1, freshman Henry Rose scored 5 points in Geometry, and junior Melanie Caneja scored 5 points in the trig round.
Coach of the Math team, Ms. Kathleen Milne said, “This year’s team has strong senior leadership and with the restriction of a maximum of four seniors on the official team, it has been competitive as far as who would get the spots.”
Due to the restriction on the number of seniors allowed to compete per team, senior Andrew Hazerjian was unable to compete officially after deciding to give his brother, Brian, his spot on the official roster. Both Andrew and Brian have been among the team’s highest scorers this season.
The math team placed 3rd in their division behind Sharon and Dover-Sherborn who were the top two teams in the league after outscoring Medway, the Norfolk Aggie, and Dedham. Overall, because of their 10th place finish out of 36 teams, they narrowly missed out on the playoffs. Nine teams advanced to the playoffs (teams ranked one through seven) and teams nine and 12 who were division winners moved on as well.
Andrew Hazerjian said, “We competed strong in all of the four meets and definitely enjoyed the home meet as a nice way to end the season. Even though we did not make the playoffs, Ms. Milne and everyone on the team is pleased with our hard work.”
With seniors making up almost half of the team, Milne said, “We will be looking for new members for next season. The team’s efforts this season have made me very proud, and I know everyone is looking forward to next year when we can hopefully continue our success.”
