Placing second in the state, the U-High Math Team was among the top teams at the ICTM State Competition at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal on April 18. The team’s members finished first in four events, second twice, and third and fourth place once.

Each event in the competition was either an individual written event, such as the written algebra or written geometry contests, or a two- or eight-person team, where members solve all questions collectively.

The results exceeded the expectations of ninth grader Alex Ouyang, who was part of the written algebra team and the freshman-sophomore eight-person team, placing first and second respectively.

 Despite feeling underconfident before the day of the competition, the eight-person team ended up answering 19 of their 20 questions correctly and subsequently placed second.

“I think we were all pretty surprised by how fast we were able to complete the problems,” Alex said. “At least, I personally wasn’t expecting to get a 19 out of 20.”

The team’s complete results are written below.

• First in state: Orals team — Sophie Li, Jack Li; Written Algebra team — William Li, Alex Ouyang, Kai Robinson, Paul Saunders, Jinglian Wu, David X (Kai Robinson and Jinglian Wu tied for third; Written Algebra II team: Sophia Holt, David Li, Lucas Murgu, captain Erik Mykland, Eva Neves, Tinson Xu (Erik Mykland and Tinson tied for fourth); freshman-sophomore two-person team — Ken Wang, Jinglian Wu
• Second in state: Written Geometry team — Jovin Alenghat, Robert Giurcanu, Nikolas Gulyayev, Jack Li, Gabriel Wang, Alex Zhang; freshman-sophomore eight-person team — Jovin Alenghat, Robert Giurcanu, Jack Li, Lucas Murgu, Alex Ouyang, Kai Robinson, Paul Saunders, Adi Shukla
• Third in state: Junior-senior two-person team — Erik Mykland, Tinson Xu
• Fourth in state: Junior-senior eight-person team — Edward Jiang, Sinziana Lazar, David Li, Parker Lin, Eva Neves, Isamu Ogo, Ken Wang, Tinson Xu