UPDATE: St. Cloud Tech Finishes 5th at State Math Tournament

UPDATE:

The St. Cloud Tech Math Team placed 5th at the State Competition. Coach Ben Thell says the team, led by junior captain Jake Knier, was only 7 points, or 2-4 correct answers, away from 3rd place.

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) - The State Tournament season continues, and the Math Team from St. Cloud Tech High School is in action this weekend.

The Minnesota State High School Mathematics League will hold the state tournament this Saturday at St. Louis Park High School.

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Ben Thell is the coach of this year’s team. He says they’ve been busy this season, mostly facing off against other local teams.

We have five regular season meets, where we get together with teams in our division. But in order to get to state, it's about winning your section. Sections are kind of more spread out competing against other teams throughout the state.

The top 50 teams in the state, along with the top 50 individuals will compete in the tournament. Thell explains how a math tournament works.

There are going to be four individual events, with four questions, each covering an array of topics. But we do know the general idea, they call them pre-algebra topics. But it's not as easy as pre-algebra in a typical math class. There'll be more complex ideas that take some creativity and problem-solving to get through. But there's only going to be four questions. The first one is meant to be relatively quick, and then they get progressively more difficult. Then the fifth event is a team event where all members of the varsity team will work together to try and solve six questions. All of these events are timed as well.

Along with state honors, the top students will be invited to compete in the American Region Mathematics League, the Harvard-MIT math tournament, and the Carnegie-Mellon math tournament.

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