After an incredibly successful season last year, placing 1st in the 5A Section and competing in the State Competition, the Cannon Falls High School Math League Team are sharpening their pencils and charging their calculators in preparation for another year of competitive mathematical problem solving. 

However, the activity is evolving from past years prompted by the Minnesota State High School League’s response to last year’s pandemic of creating an online testing website. This season, the Cannon Falls team will be staying in town and testing online, but unlike last year where the meets and practices were attended from home, competitors will be in-person with their teammates and coach. Another change from last year was the graduation of two previous Math League Team members, so the team has been busy recruiting new members. Currently, three students have joined, Charles Fick, an 8th grader, Jacob Bigalk, a sophomore, and John Mapes, a freshman. Returning members are Angel Zheng, a sophomore, Kris Kehrberg and Samuel Coyle, seniors, and Thomas Coyle, a freshman.

In response to the new members and the change back to in-person test taking, Coach Tyler Quinlan stated “Last year we were 100% online, but this year we can hold meets and practices in person … Combined with recruiting new members, the start of our season has been a whirlwind. It has been great to have some veteran team members who know how to prepare and can help lead our new members.”

The current schedule includes five meets with the possibility of competing at state depending on the team’s scoring. Each meet consists of five tests, four individual and one team exam. The individual tests are separated into four categories: Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Pre-calculus with each week diving deeper into the topics and building upon the previous weeks. Every student on the team takes two out of the four individual tests and then up to eight students participate in the team test. The team test consists of a collection of problems from topics of the other sections that all the students collaborate on. As a freshman and veteran of the Math League Team, Thomas Coyle has declared that his favorite part of the Math League meets is the team test as “it allows you to learn from your teammates,” and “lets you discuss the problems with others.”

The team has started competing with their first meet on November 1st. Only three students competed as the other members had previous commitments, “We [Cannon Falls] finished with 39 points … in 2nd place for the meet behind Shattuck St. Mary’s, who scored 59 points,” said Quinlan, “When we are able to have more of our team members make it to the competition, I know we will continue to be competitive from a scoring perspective.”