This year the Cannon Falls Math League did a complete 180. They started the year in fourth place for their division and ended January 11, 2016 in 2nd place. The past few weeks the team has been practicing as hard as they could to make it out in the top three. Not only did the team accomplish this, but two of their team members made it into the top ten. These outstanding students are Sanskar Bhakta, 8th place, and Ryan Schlichting, 4th place.

Here’s how the judging works. The coaches of each team take all of the students into separate rooms with 15-20 people per room, where they all take Test A. Then the students move to a new destination to take Test B. After these tests there is a short break before the team test, where the groups separate into their teams from school. The teams then have 20 minutes to finish a 10 question test. Then finally after the test has been taken, the team is brought back to the atrium to see the final scores. It is a pretty simple process for this complex math.

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Such a small thing as a math competition can bring kids together. In a society where jocks are valued more than intellectual geniuses , it’s nice to see students let their inner nerd out. Middle school mathlete and 8th place medalist Sanskar Bhakta, thought so too.