Congratulations to Math Team for another successful year at the Bay Math League (BML) Competition! Our Math Team once again took first place as a team, and we also had several individuals win awards. Senior Edward Zeng, junior Sean Ye, sophomore Jason Chan, and freshman Alex Dang came in first in each of their respective categories, as well as sophomore Mark Lau coming in third.

For those who don’t know, the BML Competition is an annual competition that tests participants in multiple categories of math. The competition consists of five individual rounds that each test on a different aspect of math, as well as a team round that tests all the members on all categories. Our Apaches competed fiercely with neighboring schools, including San Marino, South Pasadena, North Hollywood, and Palos Verdes Peninsula, as well as others around Southern California.

Sophomore Ajay Manneth goes more in detail about this. “You have to study for three specific topics you’re assigned to for each meet, which change every meet,” he says. When asked about what he liked about the competition, he said, “I like that there’s different things you have to learn about and prepare for.” Ajay also adds, “As well as preparing for BML, we also prepare for the Arcadia Math Competition 10 and 12 competitions.”

One of our winners, freshman Alex Dang, tells us his own comments on BML. “ The challenges I had to overcome was understanding and learning higher grade material (such as Calculus… in 9th grade) in order to do well on the competitions, which was very difficult. In addition, the research section of the test was by far the hardest, since it required independent research on a mathematician that would be tested upon in the exam,” says Alex. “Questions would be very hard to impossible to answer, even with a large amount of effort. Thorough preparation was thus required for this section.” When asked about what he liked best about the competition, he replied with, “There were prizes for people who achieved high scores, and their names were called out.”

“The competition, since it occurred at different schools, helped me see what other schools were like. It [also] built great friendship and camaraderie in the team. Although the test was very difficult, it was also very rewarding,” says Alex.

Once again, congratulations to all our Apache winners of this year’s BML, and thanks for making Arcadia proud! If you’re interested in challenging math just like Ajay and Alex, make sure to try out for next year! Good luck on your future competitions, Math Team!

Graphic courtesy of FREEPIK.COM