Calculating his way to the top
Thomas Coyle had a phenomenal math league season this year.
Thomas Coyle placed 28th at the State Junior High Math League Competition.
Thomas Coyle has done an excellent job this junior high math league season, ending up in the top six finalists. “My favorite part of the math league season was when we won first place as a team. I enjoyed seeing our team’s hard work pay off,” Thomas Coyle said about his math league experience.
Mathcounts, a competition after the math league season, had six people advance, including Thomas Coyle. He scored high and got first overall, and because of this awesome rank, he moved on to the Math Chapter event.
The first event Thomas advanced in is the Rochester Chapter Competition with 42 other people. “During the chapter competition, I felt that there was more pressure to perform because it was a one-time thing whereas in math league you had 5 meets to show what you know,” Coyle explained. Despite the pressure he faced, he still got second place out of 43 participants.
Like before, he continued on, but this time to the Invitational Chapter. The Invitational Chapter was a little less competitive, only a few people who advanced from the last event were there, and the rest didn’t advance. “They did make the questions harder though to really find your understanding of the math concepts,” Coyle said. This time there were fewer participants, with only 10. In this competition, he did great and he got 5th out of 10, which enabled him to move on to the state competition.
Thomas’s performance in Math League and Mathcounts this season was one of the most impressive things I have witnessed.
— Bucky Lindow
The state competition was held on March 25, with a total of 70 competitors. Even though there was a lot of competition, he still managed to rank 28th there. The math problems were much harder and more advanced by now. “For the state competition, they again made the questions more difficult. They also had more strict proctoring with two people watching instead of one,” Thomas Coyle said about his last competition this season.
Thomas’s experience in this math season was also a new experience for his coach Bucky Lindow. “Thomas’s performance in Math League and Mathcounts this season was one of the most impressive things I have witnessed in any category (academics, athletics, arts, etc.) that I have seen in thirty-four years as a teacher and coach,” Bucky Lindow stated. This is the first time in school history that a math athlete has gotten this far.”
