Schools

Lemont's Mathletes Squad Again Finishes Among State's Best at ICTM State Finals

The team finished in the top 20 of its division at state finals.

For the seventh time in eight years, Lemont High School’s Mathletes squad has finished among the top 20 teams in its division in state finals competition. Lemont used top 20 finishes in nine of 12 categories to finish 13th at the 2014 Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics (ICTM) Division 3AA State Finals, which were contested on May 3 on the campus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Coached by Angela Marshall, Tim Norman and Ken Suslek, Lemont has seven team top 20 finishes since 2007, including 11th-place finishes in 2007 and 2013.

The team’s best performances in state finals competition were a pair of 11th-place finishes. The Geometry Written Team - which included sophomores Spenser Bailey, Misbah Chagpar, Matt Filar, Jakub Krzeptowski-Mucha, Sarah O’Donnell and Matt Retzke - missed a top 10 finish by just two points. Chagpar, Filar, O’Donnell and Retzke teamed with freshmen Megan Atherton, Natasha Joseph, Faraz Longi and Shannon O’Donnell for 11th in the Freshman/Sophomore 8-Person Team competition, missing a top 10 finish on a tiebreaker.

With each finishing 27th in their respective categories, Bailey (Geometry) and Joseph (Algebra I) were Lemont’s top individual performers in state finals competition.

Lemont earned automatic qualification to the ICTM Division 3AA State Finals by winning a regional contest at Joliet Junior College on February 22. Riding three first-place performances and four runner-up finishes, Lemont finished with a team score of 450 at the regional, outscoring runner-up Plainfield East (356) by nearly 100 points. Lemont’s regional score ranked 18th among more than 70 Division 3AA teams from throughout the state.

Chagpar and Joseph each earned three first-place medals in regional competition. Chagpar finished first individually in the Geometry competition; was part of the victorious Geometry Written Team with Bailey, Filar, Krzeptowski-Mucha, Sarah O’Donnell and Retzke; and competed on the winning Freshman/Sophomore 8-Person Team with Atherton, Filar, Joseph, Longi, Sarah O’Donnell, Shannon O’Donnell and Retzke. In addition to being part of the winning Freshman/Sophomore 8-Person Team, Joseph also won the Algebra I individual competition, and teamed with Atherton, Longi, Shannon O’Donnell and freshmen Jacob Kecki and James Sliwa to win the Algebra I Written Team event.

Lemont finished second in four team events as well in regional competition. Juniors Jacque Desmond, Lauren May, Emma O’Leary, Tyler Schoell, Nick Urban and Dan Wang were second in the Algebra II Written Team competition; and seniors Jarrod Hanson, Katy Klein, Margaret Rogers and Joe Ziebell and juniors Elly Lambert and Radomir Fugiel teamed for a runner-up placement in the Pre-Calculus Written Team event. Fugiel, Hanson, Klein, May, Schoell, Urban, Wang and Ziebell comprised the regional’s second-place Junior/Senior 8-Person Team. Chagpar and Filar were a second-place tandem in the Freshman/Sophomore 2-Person Team category.

In other individual competitions, Sliwa (Algebra I), May (Algebra II), Retzke (Geometry) and Hanson (Pre-Calculus) all finished second within their respective categories.


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