Math Team Poised for Great Year Team Aims to Continue Regional Dominance
By Rebecca Han ‘10
News Reporter
Choate Rosemary Hall’s Math Team appears to be off to a good start that will hopefully culminate in another first place standing at the end of this season.
Tryouts for the Math Team were held earlier in the school year. Each Tryout, both Varsity and Junior Varsity, was held twice, since some people happened to miss the first tryout. The official Varsity tryout was September 8th, however, on October 9th, the second tryout was held. Junior Varsity tryouts were held both September 25th.
In a set of nine problems to be completed in thirty minutes, applicants were tested on their knowledge of Algebra, Basic Geometry, Algebra II, and their ability to come up with ways to solve complicated problems quickly and accurately.
The Varsity Team this year is as follows: Jeff Rosen ’07 [Capt.], Sarita Bunsupha ’07, Yifan Cao ’08, Stephanie Choi ’09, Aditya Rajagopalan ’09. The Varsity B Team consists of Phumpong Watanaprakornkul ’07, Jonh Lee ’07, Alan Koo ’08, Michael Lai ’09, Aakash Bhattacharya ’10.
The A team is Choate’s official representative in contests. The B team competes as more of an individual activity. Their personal scores count, but they do not compete officially representing Choate during team rounds.
The Math Team competes in an array of contests including the Greater New Haven Math League (GNHML), the Connecticut State Mathematics Contest (CSAML), the New England Mathematics League (NEAML). In the GNHML and CSAML, Choate has dominated nearly every competition for the past ten years. In the NEAML, Choate has consistently finished in the top three places from 1993 to 2006.
So far this year, Choate has been living up to that expectation, according to Jeff Rosen ’07. Coached by David Doster, head of the Math Department, the Varsity Team, on September 28th, came out top among eleven other competing schools. On October 12th the Junior Varsity team took first place out of eight total competing schools as well. The toughest challenge that Choate has to face, as with previous years, is the team from the Hopkins School in New Haven,
Both these matches were part of the GNHML, which has six competitions each season. Each match consists of five sections, one for each member of the team. Each section has three questions and a team round concludes each competition. At the end, the points earned by each team are totaled, and the winner of the contest is the school that earned the greatest number of points.
This year’s team is poised to continue the Choate tradition of coming in first every year. Says Captain Rosen, “We’re the best [team] in this area, and we have been for a really long time.”
