The NYS team finished in 14th place out of the 57 competing teams this year at the hotly contested national tournament, moving up one place from last year's 15th place finish, finishing only one place behind traditional powerhouse California and well ahead of last year's national champion Virginia. Standings for top 23 teams and top 57 individuals are available on-line.
(California is often considered something of a benchmark powerhouse state, since it is the largest state and has an exceptionally strong math culture, between the mathematically hot Silicon Valley area chapter, the legendary Bay Area mathematical community, the outstanding AoPS-affiliated San Diego Math Circle, and the up-and-coming LA math community. One indication of California's mathematical strength is that California had three times as many USAMO qualifiers as New York this year. )
HEEG mathletes Schuyler Smith and Matthew Babbitt were 2 of the 4 members of the New York team. They were joined by Albany Area Math Circle members Felix Sun and "Honorary AAMC member" Dan Mendelsohn from Nassau County on Long Island, a returning veteran from the 2006 NYS team.
AAMC members Beth Schaffer, Andrew Ardito, Drew Besse, and Dave Bieber did an outstanding job of coaching the New York team in five lengthy practices on weekends between the state and national competitions. Beth and Andrew also provided many helpful problem-solving tips and solutions, as they checked in on an on-line team journal on a daily basis.
The national contest was extremely hard again this year. Team Captain Schuyler Smith won the High Scorer on the Team award with 33 points and ranked 28th place out of 228 national finalists. To give you some idea of Schuyler's accomplishment, consider that Schuyler's score was higher than all the California national finalists notwithstanding the fact that the California students' scores at their state competition.
One of the sprint problems that Schuyler solved correctly, #27, was the hardest problem on the whole competition--only six other students among the 228 national finalists were able to solve it! Here is the problem:
#27. If each letter in the expression [a + (b/c)]*(d+e) is replaced by a different digit from 1 through 9, inclusive, what is the smallest possible integer value of the expression?
Try solving it yourself. It's harder than it looks!
Team veteran Dan Mendelsohn scored 32 points and ranked 41st place, outscoring many terrific students from all over the country. No member of the legendary powerhouse California team managed to score higher than Dan.
Felix and Matthew also performed very well, with scores among the top half of national finalists in a hotly contested, intense, and extremely challenging test. To put the team's performance into perspective, you should realize that a number of the national competitors attend schools with five-day-a-week "MATHCOUNTS classes," one or two periods during the school day, in addition to after-school practices.
As the only member of the team below 8th grade and still eligible to return next year, Matthew's score of 28 and rank of 78th holds great promise for the future. It is all the more remarkable given that he was two years younger than the typical competitor.
All four young students have also done very well on high school math contests this year, and show great promise for the future there as well. Thanks to all the enthusiasm, support, and advice from AAMC members, especially our student coaches. Thanks to all the parents for their tireless willingness to drive students to practices, scheduling flexibility, and encouragement and support of the team and coaches.
I'm also very happy to say that all four mathletes enthusiastically collaborated in writing great thank you letters to the ten sponsors of the MATHCOUNTS program immediately after the awards banquet. Letters like theirs help to ensure that programs like MATHCOUNTS will be available to students in the future.
Mathematically Yours,
Mary O'Keeffe
Schuyler and his family celebrating at the awards banquet
"Matthew, celebrating with family."
