Math Club brings home hardware from U-M competition

Greenhills’ competitive Math Club notched another success over Spring Break, taking home a second place trophy in team competition at the University of Michigan’s Math Field Day. 

The April 1 competition, sponsored by the Math Majors of America Tournament for High Schools organization, was the inaugural one at U-M. Each team has six members, and roughly 16 teams were in attendance at the Ann Arbor gathering.

In order to equitably share in participation in these competitions, some members of the Greenhills team that placed second at U-M Flint’s Math Field Day earlier this year stepped graciously aside to make room for newcomers Bonnie Liu and Ben Kovacs, both juniors, and freshman Alan Zhu. Seniors Libby Reeves and Julian Wellman and freshman Nathan Rosenberg also participated.

“Our team performed with poise and acumen,” said coach Josh Friendly. “I am also very pleased to report that four of our six participants medaled in the mix-and-match team event.”

Mix-and-match creates six-person teams at random from among all participating teams, forcing young math students to work well with others they are meeting for the first time, Friendly added.

The U-M event followed up on the team’s second-place finish at February’s U-M Flint tournament, which celebrated its 50^th anniversary this year. Greenhills has been attending the Flint tournament for about 25 years, Friendly said. Wellman, Reeves, Eric Chen, Rosenberg, and Max Froehlich competed in Flint for Greenhills.

“I am proud to report that they had great success,” Friendly said, earning second place overall in the Large School division and leapfrogging perennial rival Cranbrook for the first time. “Our success stemmed in part from an outstanding performance on Libby Reeves’ part in the chalk-talk presentation. The judges deemed her wildly knowledgeable about her chosen topic of linear regression,” Friendly said, crediting Greenhills AP Statistics teachers Barb Rocci and Ruth Miller for some of that thorough understanding.

“More than anything, their participation and competitiveness reflects our school’s and our math department’s ability to cultivate our students’ passions for and interest in mathematics – in and beyond our classrooms,” Friendly said.

The team has one more live math competition, set for May 12 at Albion College. Greenhills took second place in the inaugural Moore Math Marathon there last year, Friendly said, and this year will field veteran sophomores Sarah Fayyad and Leanne Henry, who will be joined by freshmen Nathan Rosenberg and Alan Zhu.