by Andrew S.
A long day of trial and error paid off as The Family Foundation School team Number 239 finished in the top 23 of the 389 teams who competed in Moody’s Mega Math Challenge, with an honorable mention and a $1,000 scholarship.
There were two FFS teams competing in the school’s first appearance in the tournament.
The award-winning team consisted of Andrew A., Sam B., Andrew E., Luke V. and Andrew S. The coach of this team was Jim Kavarnos, math teacher at FFS.
“The day was full of hard work but the finished product made it all worth it,” said Sam. “I’m proud to be part of the first math team to place in the challenge in FFS history,” said Luke.
The other team consisted of Sean M., Laura W., Tyler W., Sheree B., and Julie C. All of them were proud just to be part of one of the first teams to compete in the math challenge for FFS.
“I was particularly impressed with the quality of the schools we competed with. It showed our education was as good as anybody’s,” said Sid Parham, Vice President of Academic Affairs.
Every year high school teams compete for over $80,000 in available scholarship money. First place prize is a $20,000 scholarship.
“I did not expect them to do as well as they did. It was the first time our school competed and we had no clue what we were up against,” said Kavarnos. He continued, “The magnitude of what these kids accomplished is too great for me to fully explain. They competed with the top high schools on the east coast, some of whom have students competing for the second time and make Moody’s challenge one of their priorities.”
Finishing in the top 23, somewhere between seventh and twenty-third place, put the FFS team in the top 5.9 percent of all teams that competed. This is an amazing feat for FFS which placed among prestigious schools like High Technology High School of Lincroft, N.J., Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology in Hackensack, N.J..
What exactly did this group of young mathematicians have to do to get this award? They had to find the solution to a problem our nation is faced with today: How to successfully bail out the economy, and then to determine whether or not President Barack Obama’s stimulus package is the way to do this.
They also had to explain how to amend the stimulus package to make it more effective and develop an alternative method of reconstructing the economy. The team’s report was 15 pages long.
There was an initial summary that explained what the team had done and what their results were in laymen’s terms. If the judges, who were all professional mathematicians, did not find the summary interesting, they did not read the rest of the report.
The report was broken down into categories and subcategories that tackled all different issues of the stimulus package with overviews, calculations, and a test of the solution.
Robin Ducey, principal of FFS, felt that it really showed that the school’s curriculum is up to par. She said, “The staff were all very proud of the kids. Many parents called me and were delighted with the results.” Next year a new team will be competing in the tournament, but this team has left some very large shoes to fill.
