On the heels of successful seasons, Swampscott High School and Middle School math teams gave a presentation detailing their programs at a meeting of the School Committee on Thursday.
The math teams competed in a number of tournaments with students from other school districts from September through March. The high school team finished in first place in Division 2 of the Massachusetts Mathematics League. The middle school team finished the season with a record of four wins and one loss.
“This has been an outstanding year for the math team,” said High School Coach Caroline Faherty.
The math team is an academic extracurricular dedicated to advanced problem solving. The team allows students to take on challenges far above their grade level and connect with students of like-minded interest.
Captain of the high school team and leading point scorer Boris Evdomikov, a senior, said being a member of the team has opened up a new world to him.
“I was exposed to real world problems and I saw a future in something related to math,” said Evdomikov, who will be attending Northeastern University in the fall.
Evdimokov said the community is great to be a part of, thanks to his teammates to meeting students from other schools at meets.
On the middle school side, seventh-grader Michael Shusterman said he enjoys socializing with other people that like math. Students agreed that they welcome taking on difficult problems they otherwise would not be faced with in their normal math classes.
This year, the high school had 15 active members and the middle school had around 30.
“What I love about the math team is it’s a commitment,” Faherty said, “but all of these students are also on the soccer team, they’re also doing robotics, it’s a commitment but it’s not taking your whole afternoon away.”
Team members passed out sheets of paper of problem examples they might run into at a competition to School Committee members.
“One of the best things is your critical thinking improves tremendously because of the way the problems are styled,” Evdimokov said about being part of the team. “You have to think about what it’s asking and figure out what the correct solution is.”
