Albert Einstein once stated, “Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” And using these tools of logical thinking and extensive knowledge about math, the Seattle Prep Math Team placed highly in the state tournament.

“Everybody’s enthusiastic about the challenges of the problems presented at the competitions,” exclaimed sophomore Nicole Wilson about this year’s team.

The 2014 Math Team participates in competitions, and prepares for them by playing games and working through problems during their window class. Coach Mr. Ellinger gives his team problems from past state competitions in order to get ready for the actual tournament. Also, the team scouted stats from other teams competing. Typically, Bellevue Christian has been a big rival for the Panthers.

This year, the team traveled to Ellensburg, Washington to partake in the state finals. During the competition, the members arrived early in the morning at the Central Washington University campus and competed in three out of the four categories available. Seattle Prep received first place in two of the categories. Students work in groups to solve the given problem which becomes very intense and stressful, noted members of the Math Team.

Groups for the tournament normally consist of three members. However, one of Prep’s winning groups had two players, freshman Marnel Ramirez and junior Alex Kardokus.  The other small group that brought home hardware for Prep was sophomore Conor Garand, senior Caleb Smith and junior Alex Kardokus.

Due to this great success, the Seattle Prep Math Team will be moving up to division I and will compete against bigger schools.

As the season comes to an end, the Panthers say goodbye to their beloved coach, Mr. Ellinger. He has coached the team for five years and provided more than math skills to these young men and women. He noted that Seattle Prep will be hiring a new one to continue the math fun. “I had a great time,” said Ellinger, “It was a lot of fun and I’m sure glad we finally got t-shirts.”