In the world of competitive academics, few endeavors are as intellectually stimulating and rewarding as math competitions. With unwavering dedication, relentless determination and remarkable success, the Niles West Math Team left the first North Suburban Math League (NSML) meet with an overall team victory. Seniors and sophomore teams took third place, the freshmen team took second and the junior team took first.

Sophomore Jacob Kawako, competing in the junior division, submitted the only perfect paper at any level.

“I joined my second semester of freshman year. It’s definitely fun. We have all different levels of skill on the team. It’s not just a team for people who are doing great in math, but it’s also for people who are willing to improve. We have a good balance of freshmen and sophomores– we could use more juniors and seniors, which is why I had to play up,” Kawako said.

Generally, in a math competition, there are four different teams split up by grade level. Each team has different topics and five participants. Every individual on that five-person team gets a 30-minute test with five questions. It’s the same test for everybody, however, the five questions are designed to be challenging and difficult, requiring a lot of thought. The team that has the most cumulative points from all of its team members wins the overall tournament.

Niles West’s group of talented young minds have come together to form an extraordinary friendship, community and team. The shared passion for numbers has accelerated them to the top, moving them up two divisions in the league from last year.

“After COVID, our math team and a lot of our academic teams in general have been trying to get back on track to where we were before. We were in the bottom division in terms of ranking, but we worked pretty hard last year and we were able to make it state. We’ve had one meet so far and we still topped that division, which shows that we’ve been improving a lot,” sophomore Muhammad Ammar said.

Success was not an overnight achievement, but rather a product of relentless practice and dedication. The team’s members spent countless hours honing their problem-solving skills and delving into advanced mathematical concepts. Each member brought a unique strength to the table, making the team a formidable force.

“Each week we spend time working on problems from previous years. The students mix working individually with working as a team so that we build toward a successful meet,” Math Director and Math Team coach Lucas Leavenworth said.

Having a math team has served as an inspiration to other students, motivating them to take an interest in mathematics.

“I know a couple people who didn’t necessarily like math, but after joining the math team, they’ve really fallen in love with it,” Ammar said.

Ammar also believes academic clubs are underrepresented and that the work they take can go unnoticed.

“If you look at academic clubs, they are very unique and require a lot of effort and devotion, especially stuff like competition math. Competition math is vastly different that academic math. It’s a very different skill and it requires a lot of time put on the side, and most skills that you learn in your normal math classes might not even necessarily help. I feel like the amount of devotion and dedication that people put into it is often ignored and people are like ‘Oh, these people on the math teams are a bunch of nerds,’ when really it’s much deeper and more beautiful than what they think,” Ammar said.

The well-rounded group collaborates on solutions, socializing with one another and builds strong bonds through their hard work. They’ve turned math into more than just numbers; they’ve turned it into an adventure.

“I would encourage anybody who even has a remote interest in math to at least give it a serious shot. Try to move away from memorizing math; math is not memorizing results and applying it to your problems. Math is about getting to those conclusions yourself and not learning from a teacher but having the teacher assist you to get to it yourself. That’s what real proper math is,” Ammar said.

If interested, follow them on Instagram, @nileswestmath. They’re always open to anyone, regardless of math level.