Clara Chow
James Madison Memorial High School
Madison, Wisconsin

As Memorial's Varsity Team Three waited for a competing school, a fellow classmate gave an interesting point: "Math Meets never have as much credibility as sports. Even if we win the meet, it is not posted in the newspapers compared to daily reports of sport events." It was this observation that compelled me to write this article. The Memorial Math Meets need to be given their due.

The second Math Meet of the year was hosted at Memorial High School, on Wednesday, December 12th. Fifteen schools participated: 39 students were from Memorial. The Large School Math Meet consists of a Varsity Team and JV Team. At Memorial, students taking calculus qualify for Varsity; however, your performance at each meet dictates which team level you will be competing on. Memorial students are rather creative with team names, which include the "Delta Destroyers" and "Pi Are Squared."

I have been on the Math Team since I was a freshman (now I'm a junior), and although it may sound "nerdy," it is actually a lot more interesting than people often think. Otherwise, why do people participate? (Of course, it does look good on a college application). Yes, when I was an annoying little freshman, I joined because it would be "another extracurricular." However, over the years, it occurred to me that it is amazing how so many schools gather at one place just to do math and to find out who's better. (Memorial won this last meet, by the way.) You get to see your friends after school, and find out that you do not remember how to do the problems (just kidding). It does surprise me how much I have forgotten-- how are we supposed to find the center of a cube in an x-y-z coordinate plane? And after three individual events, you finally get to talk to your teammates for the team event; just waiting for someone to get an answer for the problem you were assigned to do because you don't know how to do it. Of course, this is not always the case, because I try to help out my team.

In the end, all of the schools gather to wait for their shining moment of winning a ribbon or gaining the title of "best team" in the area. Math meets are not bad at all. And Memorial is always one of the top schools that places--an achievement that surely rates some recognition.