Latin’s math team secured a fifth-place finish in the 2A division of the Illinois Council for Teachers of Mathematics (ICTM) state competition on April 6.

Their success did not surprise the math team’s coach and Upper School math teacher Chris van Benthuysen. “We’ve placed in the top six overall every year since 2018 for Division 2A,” he said.

This year’s roster consisted of a diligent band of 21 students competing in individual and team events. Eight-person teams were tasked with solving 20 problems in 20 minutes, and two-person teams raced against other teams, one problem at a time. Each Latin contestant brought a different strategy to the competition.

“How they work together as a team really comes from the captains and the veterans of these contests,” Mr. van Benthuysen said. “They help the folks who are new to the contests navigate them and figure out how they’ll work best together as a group in the team events as they work through old contests at our practices.”

The suspense built up at the award ceremony, as placements were announced in reverse order. Due to a small mistake by junior Jack Lyons and senior Gideon Heltzer during the Oral portion, they were not feeling confident.

“By third and second place, they were no longer even listening to the announcements.” Mr. van Benthuysen said. “And then, ‘First place, Latin School of Chicago, Jack Lyons and Gideon Heltzer.’ Neither of them even heard it, and we had to yell at them to get their attention and tell them what happened multiple times until Jack’s jaw was on the floor. The look on Jack’s face when we told him was priceless.”

In addition to Jack and Gideon’s big win, the team left the competition with 11 awards, including freshman Rohin Shah and sophomore Scarlet Gitelson, who snagged first place in their freshman/sophomore two-person team for the first time in Latin history and in the Algebra I contest, the Latin team (freshmen Jordan Abell, Calvin Cheng, Sara Cutinho, Robert Danciu, and Rohin Shah) got second place.