News

This past Friday, 21 teams of seventh and eighth-grade students from nine different schools across the St. Louis area competed in St. Louis U. High’s annual middle school math competition. These teams, made up of three to five students each, worked through two rounds of problems in the west side of the Si Commons. 

SLUH has been hosting a middle school math competition for 48 years, with math teacher Julie Moeser organizing the event for the past 13 years. The competition serves as a fun opportunity for middle school mathletes throughout the city to test their knowledge of mathematical concepts and puzzle solving abilities in a battle of wits.

This year, the competition was made up of two 32-minute rounds of 10 questions each. Each team was given one collective answer sheet and one official question sheet, as well as a copy of the questions for each competitor to write on. 

“It's not algebra, it's not geometry, it's not trig, though there can be concepts from those courses that you guys would think of,” said Moeser. “It's more just challenging, logical thinking problems. It’s a great way for them to see math that they wouldn’t otherwise see.”

The puzzling nature of the questions is similar to high school level competitions such as the MaPP, which SLUH competes in, so the competition prepares students for potentially competing again in the future. In fact, many competitors might compete right here at SLUH.

“The majority of (our competitors) are choosing SLUH,” said Kate Marnatti, a math teacher at St. Catherine Labouré, when asked about where her students are matriculating next fall.

In a sense, although both boys and girls compete, the competition also serves as an added opportunity for potential SLUH students to be exposed to the environment of going to school here.

Moeser invited many schools in the St. Louis area to form teams and send students, with some schools sending one team and other schools sending up to five teams. It is completely up to the school to decide what students compete and how the teams are arranged, but all competitors work with people from their own school.

“We actually let them volunteer to compete,” said Marnatti. “They got to choose if they wanted to do it.”

This approach proved successful, especially with the revised scheduling of the competition.

In previous years, the competition took place on a weekend in January, often on a Saturday. Moeser reached out to several schools and teachers, and many of them believed that moving the event to a weekday would improve ease of transportation and help with attendance. Moeser also pointed out that it would be harder to get students to come if they had to give up half of their weekend, and missing school on a Friday is, for most students, an appealing opportunity.

The top three teams represented St. Catherine Labouré, St. Margaret of Scotland, and St. Charles Borromeo, respectively, though all teams competing performed admirably on a difficult test despite the unfamiliar nature of the questions. The absence of those familiar math topics of algebra and geometry forces students to think on their feet and improvise solutions to questions that they most likely have never encountered anything like before. Another result of this was that most teams did not prepare for the competition beforehand, as this type of test is more difficult to anticipate in every way. Despite this, however, these young mathematicians all showed up and showed out for their schools, and SLUH is excited to see many of them become Jr. Billikens in the future.