A Look At The SPHS Math Team

Severna Park High School offers dozens of clubs, sports and extracurricular activities to students. One of those clubs is the school math team.

Composed of students from all grades, the team competes five times during the school year against other Anne Arundel County schools, public and private.

At a competition on January 21, the Severna Park math team placed second overall for the team round. All the Falcons put up strong showings in the individual round, with senior Dennis Malikov placing first with a perfect score.

The competitions are traditionally held at Anne Arundel Community College. Both the team and individual rounds take 30 minutes and include six questions. Individual round questions vary in difficulty, but for the team round, every question is meant to challenge the students in ways they wouldn’t normally see in the classroom.

“We solve a bunch of complicated math problems,” sophomore Sabrina Richter said. “They’re more critical thinking than just solving, so you really have to think hard about them.”

The competition questions are unlike the problems students see on their math tests or homework in class. These questions are more outside the box. Students have to use diagrams or work through more complicated word problems than in their math classes. Some problems can take an entire meeting to work through and require an entire whiteboard to solve.

The team has reached first place in previous years and hopes to achieve the spot again. With several competitions already under their belt this year, and lots of practice, they hope to reach their goal.

“We’ll have preparation where we just go through old, previous years’ competitions and work through their problems, solutions, whatnot,” Malikov said.

Always there to cheer on their students are faculty sponsors Janna Kintzley and Michele Staisloff, who hold team meetings in their classrooms, provide practice items and guide students through new material. Many times, students will teach each other material they’re confident in. That way, everyone improves their skills.

“Each student has different strengths, so team members take turns explaining practice problems and teaching the others new content,” Kintzley said. “My favorite part about sponsoring the math team is witnessing the excitement of students so eager to learn and master new skills. I love how well the students work together, support each other and share the same goal of learning and applying mathematics.”

Between the many math problems and the regular classes students take, the team offers a chance for students interested in mathematics to expand their thinking to more high-level concepts.

“It’s a fun extracurricular to do outside of school, and it just helps you improve,” sophomore Margot Argeles said. “I think it’s helped me improve my everyday math and being able to solve problems.”

No matter how the scores turn out, or how many points are scored, the skills the students learn are indispensable.