Last competition in season fails state advancement
Math team finishes on high note
February 18, 2016
After completing his last math team competition of his high school career, as senior Ben Freund was about to join his fellow competitors for a pizza party, he began to sing the tune from Frozen, ‘Do you want to build a snowman?’ when he heard an unfamiliar voice join him.
“I wasn’t at all paying attention when I was singing the song and all of a sudden I hear someone else. I turn my head and there (the Edina coach) is,” Freund said. “Everyone on my team (saw me singing). They were all face palming and saying ‘shut up.’”
Freund said the coach does not seem like the type of person to join him in singing a Frozen song.
“He has a full-out beard, seems all serious and he started singing randomly,” Freund said.
Math team adviser Kristin Johnson said she found the duet to be humorous.
“I think it is awesome because part of the whole math team experience is doing the math and getting better skills at it, but also having that camaraderie with other students that are similar,” Johnson said.
According to Freund, math team placed fourth at the Feb. 8 meet at Wayzata High School and won’t advance to state.
“Math team at St. Louis Park has a pretty strong tradition of getting fourth place no matter what,” Freund said. “In terms of stability, it went well. In terms of getting in the top three, we didn’t do it, but we got fourth place, again.”
Johnson said although Hopkins triumphed over Park in the end with higher scores on the team test, Park exceeded Hopkins’ score in the group test.
“It could have gone better, but at this point in the season, it was really a long shot to still make it to State, so having that opportunity to have fun and give it a shot, that is really all we are hoping for,” Johnson said.
Freund said he has various enjoyable memories from his years in math team, including the previous meet at Edina where he and the other junior varsity competitors played Pictionary instead of doing the event.
“It being the last meet in senior year, and me doing math team for all these years, I am going to miss math team,” Freund said. “It was nice having Johnson and (Will) Tanberg as coaches. We have had some good memories.”
The competition season for math team has ended, but according to Johnson, the American Mathematics Competition takes place Feb. 17 and students interested in taking the test can contact Johnson or Tanberg.
