Cardigan Competes in Deerfield Math Competition

It was a great day of problem-solving when Cardigan’s math team traveled to the Deerfield Math Competition on Saturday, April 29.

Cardigan was represented by ten students: Sunghoon “Willy” Park ’23, Gyeongmin “Andy” Han ’23, Jaeseong “Nathan” Kim ’23, Minjun Hwang ’23, Aaron You ’23, Souta Kidosaki ’24, Max Gerbut ’24, Hyun Jun “Jason” Ko ’23, Josh Kim ’23, and Joonki “Michael” Yoon ’24. The boys participated in the event for sixth through ninth-grade students in which over 50 individuals competed on 11 teams from six schools. 

The first round of the competition was a 45-minute Individual Theme test in which Andy and Willy tied for third overall. Next up was a 45-minute Individual Relay that required students to use their previous answers to solve the next question. Willy Park and Nathan Kim both tied for third overall in this round. For individual combined results, Andy Han finished in fourth place and Willy Park finished in third place. 

After lunch, all students joined together for the team events. Cardigan was represented by two different teams: X (Willy, Andy, Minjun, Aaron, and Nathan) and Y (Souta, Max, Jason, Josh, and Michael). The first event had students work with their teams in the General Round for 45-minutes, solving problems together. Cardigan Y earned second place overall, and Cardigan X earned third place. 

The final part of the competition for the day was a 60-minute Team Guts Round during which results from questions answered correctly were displayed in real-time so everyone knew how they were doing compared to the competition. Cardigan X earned third place out of all 11 teams in this round.

For the team events combined, Cardigan Y earned second place and Cardigan X earned third place out of all 11 teams. 

It is worth noting that these same mathletes competed in the American Math Competition (AMC) in November. AMC is a national exam––25 multiple choice questions in 75 minutes––in which 300,000 students from over 4,000 schools participate annually. 

“We have had three students score in the top 2.5% of all test takers for the AMC 10 [students in grade 10 and below] during the past eight years and qualify for the prestigious invitational AIME test,” says Math Coach Morgan Wilkinson. “This year Willy Park was one of them.” 

Congratulations to our Cougar Mathletes!