The Buchholz High School math team won its 16th state championship in the past 19 years over the weekend, beating 32 math teams.
The team won first place in all four divisions of the Florida Association of Mu Alpha Theta’s math convention in Orlando, earning 7,444 points to beat rival American Heritage Broward, which earned 7,133 points.
Including its 22 first-place trophies, the Buchholz math team brought home 231 trophies.
Buchholz coach Will Frazer said younger team members were crucial to the win’s wide margin, earning 989 points in the Theta division, where other teams earned anywhere from 42 to 767 points.
Frazer said the younger students are eager to work hard, as they are fresher, with less outside commitments than older students.
“They feed off each other,” Frazer said in a phone interview. “Nobody wants to be the lazy person in the group. So I think their passionate and hard work feeds off each other.
The team’s model also involves older students working to help the younger students, and the stronger to help the weaker. Frazer said his favorite memory from this year’s competition was after the win, when the team, younger and older together, gathered in a corner to hug and cry and celebrate.
“I think I saw more emotion and passion this competition than I’ve ever seen in my group,” Frazer said. “And that’s just beautiful to see, them crying for good reason. Crying out of joy.”
The Buchholz math team won its 15th state title in 2022, but slipped to second place last year, losing the top spot to American Heritage by one question out of 1,000.
While the team went on to its 15th national title last summer, working hard to prove they were the better team, Frazer said the older students came back this year feeling a sting from last year’s state competition.
That sting turned into competitive drive, which Frazer said helped the team members realize they had become complacent in their constant success.
“I think there was that sense that somebody’s trying to dethrone us and we’re not going to roll over,” Frazer said. “You could just see it in the weeks leading up, the seriousness. The attitude was, there was no complacency. That was beautiful.”
The BHS team will compete to defend the national title this year in Las Vegas on July 7-12. First, though, Frazer said team members will be focusing on AP exams through May.
The first-place state winners are as follows:
- Team divisions:
- Mu division (Calculus): Daniel Wang, Thomas Wu, Andrew Xing and Billy Yang
- Alpha division (Pre-calculus): Jerry Yao, Saber Lian, Bryan Zheng and Eric Gao
- Theta division (Algebra 2 and Geometry): Jonathan Lin, Watson Inglett, Xi Chen and Daniel Zhang
- Statistics division: Anish Patel, Vijay Hans, Michael Wei and Eileen Lai
- Relay: Katie He, Bryan Zheng and Xi Chen
- Individual winners:
- Katie He: Mu Area and Volume
- Eileen Lai: Statistics Ciphering
- Anish Patel: Statistics individual
- Daniel Wang: Mu Ciphering
- Daniel Wang: Mu BC Calculus
- Nathan Wei: Mu Applications
- Michael Wei: Open Probability
- Eddie Yuan: Alpha Equations and Inequalities
- Bryan Zheng: Alpha Trigonometry
- Bryan Zheng: Alpha Matrices and Vectors
- Antony Kurian: Theta Logs and Exponents
- Daniel Zhang: Theta Applications
- Daniel Zhang: Equations and Inequalities
- Thomas Wu: Mu Integration
- Xi Chen: Theta Quadrilaterals
- Xi Chen: Theta Geometry
- Jonathan Lin: Theta Functions
Eastside High School and Gainesville High School teams also competed. GHS came in 16th overall, Eastside was 19th.