For the first time in 3 years, the South High math team went to the State math competition. The team, consisting of some of South’s brightest students, continued a long history of success and inclusion. The meet took place on March 12 and took place at Augsburg college which runs and organizes most of the Minnesota state high school math meets.

The team, placing 25th overall has had a great season, and “has been really fun to be a part of” said Senior Erin Wallin.

“It was fun, but we just sort of go with it. The feel is very go-with-the-flow,” said Wallin, who went to the meet as an alternate. Wallin feels that “it was a good experience, but it is definitely more serious for other members.”

Senior Nathan Yeazel is one of those members. “It’s a culmination of a year’s competition, and very satisfying closure to 4 years of hard work.” Senior Jiabin Dai, who has also been on the team for 4 years feels that “the meet went really good, I’m really happy with how we did as a team.” 

Dai specifically has been a very hard working member of the team, “I practice about an hour a week, most of it is review. But most people don’t practice, and I take a lot of breaks for video games!”

Yeazel agreed, “we’re probably the best team that doesn’t really try that hard. I’m really only into this ‘math’ thing for the free snacks [laughs].”

Senior Donald Shen, a chinese foreign exchange student has had a really positive experience this year on the math team. “It’s definitely a lot of fun, and it’s helped me make a lot of new friends. At the meet I was surprised, most of the other teams are mainly Chinese and Korean. I would know!”

“I’ve done a lot of math back in China, and also competitions, and it’s been really good to meet new people and work on my English,” explained Shen, who helped the team get a perfect score on their team contest.

Yeazel agreed,“it’s a shame they don’t score the portions individually, we were tied for first with several other schools. It would have been cool, as nerdy as that sounds, to be the first in state. We would be like, the coolest nerds at school.”