RE LOG Fall 2024

32 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2024 Pi in the Sky The fun-filled rise of the middle school math team Student News When math teacher Jessica Merrick arrived at Ransom Everglades in 2021, she took the reins of the middle school math team from the legendary Ginny Onorati, who had retired that spring after 47 years at RE. Merrick inherited a young and inexperienced squad populated in part by sixth-grade students who, like Merrick, were new to the RE community. Despite its youth, RE’s middle school math team – featuring three precocious then-sixth graders Joshie Khohayting ’28, Daniel Li ’28 and Alex Tevelow ’28 – not only advanced to the 2022 state championship in Jacksonville, but also scored an impressive 10th-place finish competing against teams of mostly eighth graders. That’s when Merrick knew she was in for an exciting ride with the middle school math team. Three years later, she’s had even more fun than she ever imagined. Last spring concluded a thrilling run of success that culminated in back-to-back runner-up finishes in the state math championships after finishing first – for two straight years – at the regional Mathcounts event at Florida International University. In March, as the competitive season concluded, Li qualified for the elite Florida math team selected to compete in the 2024 RTX Mathcounts National Competition, and Merrick was named head coach – both significant firsts for Ransom Everglades. Together, they helped the Florida team achieve a fifth-place team finish at the national championship in Washington, D.C., and Merrick coached the individual national champion. With all of those accomplishments, and many more, the 2024-25 season ranked as arguably the RE middle school math team’s best year ever. “Our team really clicked from day one,” Tevelow said. “We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and helped each other get better by pushing each other where we needed it … The camaraderie made me enjoy math even more.” Indeed, the RE mathletes had fun together, working diligently as a team and cheering each other’s successes. Under the direction of Merrick and assistant coach Ed Lally, they lived RE’s core values of support and community, joy and wellbeing, and honor and excellence. “It was the perfect combination of hard work, kids really wanting it, and teamwork,” said Merrick, now Assistant Head of the Middle School. “The fact that we had such a solid team that supported each other is the reason they did so well … I sat there and was the cheerleader.” The math teammembers practiced every other day leading up to the state championship. As the students worked together, their friendship deepened. They took individual practice tests and engaged in many team-round practices. Merrick and Lally video-recorded those team rounds and they and their students watched, critiquing their performances. “The closeness of the teammeant that we worked well with each other and were able to communicate a lot, which Sofiya Dewan ’29, Maxie Wu ’28, Daniel Li ’28, Alex Tevelow ’28, Joshie Khohayting ’28, Coach Jessica Merrick