The Bangor High School math team won the Maine State Math Meet in Augusta on Tuesday for the second year in a row.
It marks the first time in at least 16 years that the team has won both the regular season and the state tournament, according to coach Carl Robbins.
Extra weekend practices and the allure of free pizza after school contributed to the win by fusing a particularly collaborative team, according to students and coaches.
“We’ve got a pretty dedicated crew this year,” said 12th-grader Jacob Klein, who scored a perfect 72 at the meet along with 10th-grader Kai Grosjean.
The team typically practices Monday and Tuesday nights and Friday mornings and solves problems from past years on large whiteboard tables in a classroom to train. This year, Klein led some Saturday practices, too.
“In years past, it’s been [coach Eric Steadman] and I that are the motivators,” Robbins said. But this year, Klein was the one organizing students for extra practices. This is the first time that’s happened, Robbins said, adding that the team didn’t practice at all before 2010.
“The really strong students wanted to really help the students who maybe didn’t have as much experience with all their tips and tricks, and it’s pretty cool,” Steadman said.
Klein said Steadman recruited him for the team in his first year of high school.
“He told me that if I came to the first Monday night practice, there’d be pizza or something. I showed up and then I’ve just been doing it ever since,” he said.
Those Monday night pizzas were “probably why we won, honestly,” team member Ava Rigler joked.
Students also credited the teachers who coach them and often go above and beyond as reasons behind their success.
“They’ll always be there to push you along and help you with a problem, even if they’re on their breaks,” Meghna Vijay said of the teachers, who come into school for Saturday practices.
Beyond the Saturday practices, the program also added a 20-minute class period during the school day this year when students could work on math team problems, which was offered this year for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Robbins.
The team competes regularly throughout the school year, and some students will travel to New Hampshire for a national meet in June.
The state meet this week included three different categories: an individual round, a relay round where players pass their answers back to the next person to use for a new problem and a team round.
The training and competitions give students the opportunity to go beyond classroom learning and solve more outside-the-box problems, while also continuing to practice skills from previous years that students might otherwise forget, Steadman said.
Team members at the state meet included Zafir Bashir, Abby Caron, Wyatt Chadwick, Preston Couto, Grosjean, Klein, Rigler, Daniel Robbins, Vyom Sathyanarayanan, Daniel Siemers, Anca Soare and Vijay.
