As junior Kirby Goodman participated in her first varsity event on the math team, she said she struggled but managed to be one of the few competitors in that event to score.

“I did OK. It was not my best score but one of the events I did was really hard and I was one of the only people to score in the event,” Goodman said. “There were people missing who would get a lot, if not most of, our points, but those of us who were there tried to do our best.”

The math team struggled in its meet at Minnetonka High School Dec. 14 because six out of the top eight competitors could not attend the event due to various commitments, according to adviser Kristin Johnson.

“We were only three points away from being in fifth,” Johnson said.

Johnson said although the team had 12 participants to make a qualified team of eight in order to participate in a meet, multiple competitors switched events they had not practiced for to replace the missing students who could not attend.

“All of a sudden people who were practicing other events were thrown into events they had not practiced for,” Johnson said. “I am appreciative of the kids because they were open and willing to jump in and help each other out and it does give some people who have not had the opportunity to be on varsity to be on the team.”

Although individually the team did not perform well, it finished with a score of eight out of 24 points on the team event and junior Aaron Councilman received a perfect score of twelve in Event D, according to Johnson.

“Even though we had people who did not necessarily practice the team event, they were still able to pull out a decent team score,” Johnson said. “We should have actually gotten 12 because they just did not follow the guidelines in terms of how (the judges) want the answer presented.”

Goodman said despite missing students who usually bring up the team’s score, she feels pleased with how the members performed in the team event.

“A highlight on the team event was when we had done some problem that we were not getting the points for and our coaches advocated for us, so then we ended up getting the points,” Goodman said. “We were surprised because the people missing were the top eight that usually did the team event. We tried to work together and we got a few of them right, which was exciting because we made up what we lacked in individual scores.”

According to Goodman, the team can prepare itself for upcoming competitions.

“We need to make sure that we review the topics and don’t just go in without knowing the formulas, even if we have learned them before,” Goodman said.

Two conference meets remain before the State competition. As of now, Johnson said after the performance in the past meet, she does not expect Park to qualify. The next meet takes place at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at Edina high school.