As the members of math team counted the minutes until the start of the mathematics competition, senior Faduma Mohamed said she hoped the team’s hard work would pay off.

“We do practices and team practices…to prepare for the competitions,” Mohamed said. “I hope I can learn to better understand math (and) I hope we get enough points to win.”

During the competition, junior Isaac Israel said he felt confident in his performance and that participating helps him improve.

“I’m doing pretty well. I got at least two right on both events,” Israel said. “I’ve gotten way better at math by doing this.”

Park placed sixth out of eight math teams Jan. 24. According to advisor Kristin Johnson, the team’s performance reflects their consistent improvement.

“We have been improving as the season goes on,” Johnson said. “We scored over 50 points, which we have not so far this year. Additionally, we were very close score-wise to Breck mostly due to the fact that we improved on this meet.

According to Mohamed, math competitions help her with time management and problem solving. She said they also remind her to not overcomplicate problems.

“I learned how to better allocate my time and how to solve certain problems,” Mohamed said. “Some of the questions might seem like they’re trying to trick you, but they have simple answers.

Israel said challenging himself in math is fun because the team is supportive.

Math team formulates fun

“I get to hang out with all my friends and we learn new math stuff. We get better at it,” Israel said. “It’s a really good community. It’s really fun, and becoming more of a leader in this team has been really fun.”

Johnson said it will be difficult for math team to learn new topics in the limited time before the next competition.

“The bad news is we only have two weeks before the next meet, so we don’t have a lot of practice time,” Johnson said. “The topics are a little bit different than they have been.”

Math team competes in their final meet 3:30 p.m. Feb. 14 in B330.