Members of City High’s Math Club were welcomed at West High school by donuts and a whole lot of numbers as they arrived at this year’s state math competition. As a part of the Great Plains Math League, the mathletes competed against 10 other Iowa schools hoping to earn a spot at the regional tournament.

City High ended with a proud third place finish behind powerhouses Central Academy of Des Moines and West High.

“It’s like a first place position honestly,” Dustin Gwee ‘14 said.

City High finished with 234 points while Central had 380 and West 384 on Saturday, April 26th.

“The difference between second and third place was incredible,” Xavier Fields ‘15 said. “Central academy is a magnet school, so people go there who are really good at math and science. That puts them at an advantage. West is tough too. They have people who are really serious about it.”

Fields and Kerry Soderdahl ‘15 are captains of this year’s math club.

The third place finish was indeed enough to qualify City High for the regional tournament in Kansas City on Friday, May 16th. City High has qualified and attended the regional tournament in recent years.

“We’re not sure if we’re going as a school yet because it would cost a lot of money and we don’t know if it would be worth it as an experience,” Fields said. “West High is definitely going. People outside of Iowa will be there, but I’m not sure from how far people will come.”

The team’s success didn’t come as much of a surprise as they usually qualify for state, although it proved to be more challenging than in previous years with the loss of last year’s captain Boris Perkhounokv, who now studies mathematics at Stanford. Perkhounokv was last year’s leading scorer and took calculus as a freshman.

“People are definitely stepping up the roles we need to fulfill. We lost Boris who was a really good competitor,” Fields said.

Math Club competes in four to six competitions throughout the school year, one at City High. Through these competitions, participants are able to qualify for state both as a team and individually if enough points are acquired through a complex scoring system. At most competitions there are four different rounds. Each round includes a different type of event, whether it be individual or as a team.

One example is the relay.

“Relay is a three person team. Each person gets a part of a problem. The first person solves his or her part of the problem and passes it off to the next person, which helps that person solve their part fo the problem. That person then passes it to the final person and in the end, you’re supposed to come up with a final answer.” Gwee said.

Individual events include the target round and the sprint round.

“The sprint round is a really misleading name. It’s an hour long test and it’s 30 questions.” Gwee said.

Most regular season competitions have four events, but the state competition has five. Three are team tests, and two are individual, with the addition of the ‘Power Round’.

“The power round is ridiculously hard,” Gwee said.

The math done at competitions and at club meetings is not the same as math done in regular math class. Problems are more complex and include multiple skills and logic.

“It’s more like number theory kind of things I guess,” Fields said.

Math Club meets on Mondays at 3:30 in room 1212.