Last year, seventh and eighth graders from St. Robert participated in the Marquette Math Meet. The Marquette Math Meet is a math competition participated in by schools in the Milwaukee area. Last year, the St. Robert team won three awards. Jackie Collopy and Joseph Povinelli both won ribbons for the individual contest, while one of the teams won 5th place. The team members were Julie Demet, Jackie Collopy, Kate Udell, Declan Byrne, and Aidan Frazier.

This year’s St. Robert’s seventh and eighth graders competed again in the Marquette Math Meet. This year’s team consisted of Mary Callanan, Campbell Schafer, Aidan Frazier, Declan Byrne, Jake Nation, Enzo Demichele,  Joseph Povinelli, Bennett Coffou, Will Lewein, Maddie Connell, Jack Koshkin, and as their coach, Ms. Biernacki, who is the middle school math teacher and was a proctor at the event. The meet started at 12:30 PM and went until about 4:00 PM. The meet started with an orientation, telling the participants what they would be doing and about the different tests that they would be taking. The competition started with an individual test. The participants were split into two groups, depending on their grade level or skill, who each took different tests. The first group was called Level Gamma, which was for students taking Algebra I or Pre-Algebra and had about 200 people participating. The second group was called Level Beta, which was for students taking Algebra-II, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus and had about 150 people participating. All of the St. Robert competitors took the Level Gamma tests. The individual test had Algebra I and Pre-Algebra problems of varying degrees of difficulty, from adding negatives to square roots and probabilities. The participants had about an hour to complete the test, from about 12:50 PM to 1:40 PM. After the test, there was a fifteen minute break where free cookies and refreshments were available to the competitors. During the break, the answers to the test questions were posted so you could see what your score was. After the break, the competitors were asked to find a table and sit with other participants that they didn’t know and didn’t go to their school.

These were to be the teams, each with four participants. This was different from the last year’s team competition, though. Last year, the participants had been put into teams with students from their own school. This test was six different sets of problems, each member of the team getting one problem per set. After two minutes, the student would pass his or her problem to a team member to be revised. After that the team would get together and decide on their final answers. After the team competition the awards ceremony began. This years award winners from St. Robert’s were Mary Callanan, who won a medal in the individual contest for getting a better score than 90% of 200 students. Another award went to Campbell Schafer won a medal with her team in the team contest. Overall the St. Robert School team did well, but the new team challenge made the competition extra challenging and interesting.