The auditorium buzzed with excitement with chaos.
Dozens of mathletes spoke over each other as teams rushed to submit their final answers, hoping to score a strong estimate on the last set of the Guts round, the “estimathon.” With nervous anticipation, Saratoga’s Team 1 submitted their final papers and watched their top 5 position frozen on the scoreboard. They would have to wait until the awards ceremony to see their final results, as the last round’s answers were submitted.
This was the scene on Nov. 2, when the SHS Math club sent three teams to the Berkeley Math Tournament (BMT), a tournament inviting around 1,100 students of grade 12 and below, from local high schools, middle schools and math organizations. The highly competitive Team 1, consisting of seniors Alan Lu and Skyler Mao, junior Lawson Wang and sophomores Andy Lu, Seabert Mao and Vivian Zhong, placed third overall at the tournament and first among the attending high schools.
Team 2 included juniors Richard Fan, Ella Li, Max Rombakh and Emily Wu, and freshmen Fiona Liu and Derek Wang. Team 3 consisted of senior Alan Cai, juniors Vivian Lei and Navya Rao, sophomore Mona Chen and freshman Jen Li.
Team 1 notably placed fourth in the Power round — a proof-based team in collaboration with this year’s theme of origami. They also placed sixth in Guts — a rapid-fire round in which teams receive questions in sets of three and submit all answers when completed to receive the next set of questions out of more than 100 attending teams.
The team consists of strong individual performers, with all members receiving distinctions (top 20%) in individual competitions. Skyler Mao placed third in Calculus; Seabert Mao, Skyler’s younger brother, and senior Alan Lu placed sixth and 10th respectively in Geometry; and Andy Lu placed seventh in Calculus and Algebra.
BMT also hosted a few fun, recreational competitions including an Integration Bee and a Plank Countdown round, in which participants would compete in the countdown while doing a plank. Alan Lu ranked fourth in the Integration bee. Seabert Mao participated in the Plank Countdown and was promptly eliminated.
Most club members also competed in the American Math Competition (AMC), which took place at school on Nov. 6 and Nov. 12. Top scorers qualify for the American Math Invitational Exam (AIME) in February.
“The top scoring school team is really good considering we had three sophomores,” Alan Lu said. “Individuals could have been better, but overall we were pretty consistent so our team still did really well.”
