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Dear ,
2023 ARML Recap
Our 2022–2023 cycle has come to an end one weekend ago. For the first time since its inauspicious disbanding, the Upstate New York Math Team traveled to Penn State and participated in ARML. The results were excellent! Please read below for Coach Villani’s account of how last weekend unfolded at Penn State.
— Japheth Wood
What a beautiful weekend in State College, and congratulations to all 19 students, coaches, parent volunteers, proctors, graders, and supporters! I am excited to share some of the details and highlights of the weekend below.
— Anthony Villani
Thanks to a fleet of coordinated carpool drivers, our team started arriving on a beautiful, warm, sunny Friday just in time for a team dinner at Pollock Commons. Introductions were made, pasta was eaten, and Coach Japheth Wood arrived from a traffic-filled journey just in time to eat and hand out our bespoke Upstate ARML team T shirts. Students, coaches and volunteers dispersed to check into their rooms and just made it over to the Thomas Building by 8pm for Po-Shen Loh's Colloquium on Human Intelligence. A few students even got an autograph!
Meanwhile, coaches and proctors met with the ARML organizers to review the complicated logistics. The students met up and took our first (nearly complete) team photo! Coach Wood is on the far left, next to ARML notable Anchala Sobrin!
Now that the students were fed, checked in, and dazzled by IMO Coaching Legend Po-Shen Loh, it was time to relax with a huge outdoor party in front of Pollock Commons! Hundreds of students took part in a karaoke team challenge, and Upstate followed an endless string of hip-hop songs by NYC and DC area teams with this Eighties classic, featuring live saxophone!
Click above to view the video!
By 11pm, students were back in their toasty rooms, windows thrown open, preparing for a night's rest.
Breakfast was bright and early Saturday in Redifer and Pollocks Commons. Camera-shy Professor Allen Knutson prepared the noshing students for their scorching performance on team round less than an hour later with an impromptu talk featuring a table-filling collection of invertible tiles.
Proctors extraordinaire Suvendu Sahoo, Anna Gebbie, David Chung, Zsuzsanna Marchl, and Anthony Villani were up next, finding their teams and spending much of the rest of Saturday guiding them, endlessly collecting (and later redistributing phones), and, of course, handing out and submitting dozens of sheets of math problems. Upstate ARML students, meanwhile, headed to their competition rooms in Willard and Osmond Halls.
The students spent the early morning competing on the team round and power question. Click this button to view the team round challenge:
Can you and your friends solve 9 out of 10 of these in 20 minutes? Well, the Upstate ARML students did, a feat only matched or exceeded by two other teams in the entire nation! (NYC A and juggernaut Lehigh Valley A). Upstate even outscored nationals champs San Francisco Bay Area A on this round! Congratulations on a great round of teamwork, collaboration, division of labor, great judgement calls, and grace under pressure.
After Power Question, it was time for a long, mid-morning walk to Bryce Jordan Arena with over 60 other teams. Here's a small glimpse of what a thousand or so math students look like in a Big 10 basketball arena:
Upstate ARML found their spots and were ready for individual round:
Each student had 5 rounds of a pair of questions, to be completed in 10 minutes each. A busy time for our proctors! This round took a while and the pressure was intense.
By 12:30pm, it was time for lunch on the Arena concourse, and at some point thereafter, the team actually ventured outside for this shot. I see here a pensive team, still trying to wrap their heads around questions 7 and 8, perhaps:
After a chatty lunch, students returned to the arena for relay rounds, which finalized the competition. Then began the long wait for results, slowed by a challenged answer on individual question 10. A busy time to be sure for our stalwart graders, Professors Wood and Knutson. Did you know some teens have sloppy handwriting on proofs??!
Finally, the results came in, a team score of 164, good enough for 27th place nationally out of 116 teams, and 7th out of 48 in our "B" division, just missing out on team medals for the top six teams in the B division. Those 45 team round points really helped! Congratulations to the amazing team of Andrew, Anson, Athena, Celene, David C., David V., Emily, Gus, Iris, Jacob, James, Jason, June, Kenneth, Mason, Maureen, Michael, Paul, and Taran!! It was time to take a final team photo before tiebreakers! I even show up in this one!
As individual results were aggregated, Team Captain David Villani was announced as qualifying for Tiebreaker Round, with an amazing individual score of 7, As only 8 students nationally finished with a higher score of 8 or 9, the remaining ranked positions were settled with a timed question. David joined dozens of students around the country to look at this timed beauty:
David turned in a result of 2019 at 3:30 minutes, but like most of the elite group, could not find the correct answer of -2019 under time pressure. No matter! With places settled, David collected a coveted ARML plaque for Top Individual Scorer. Sophomore Emily Yu was named Upstate NY team high scorer with 6 correct answers, and will be headed to a future tiebreaker in years to come. Congratulations to both our decorated individual scorers!
With competition concluded, hundreds of students enjoyed a return to fresh air, camaraderie, and chatter during the long walk back to Pollock Commons to check out and return keys. Our carpool drivers stepped up again and hopefully everyone returned to Upstate before dark. We had a wonderful weekend in State College, and are so thrilled by the successes of the young team and especially, the return to in-person competition. Best wishes to our departing seniors, Gustav, Anson, Paul, and David V, and we are excited about the young team members and prospects for ARML 2024. Upstate NY ARML is back!
Best,
Anthony
Full Team Results for 2023 ARML
Thanks Coach Villani! The weekend was an amazing experience, and I’m grateful for the support of the Upstate New York Math Team community, including parents, alumni, and especially this year’s team members.
Looking forward, it’s time to plan for next year’s 2024 ARML. We plan to open the application to be a team member as early as September. Please get in touch if you’d like to get involved with the team. Everything we do is on a volunteer basis, including weekly trainings and coaching and developing the website. Your ideas could make a big difference!
Sincerely,
Japheth
—
Japheth Wood
P.S.: Please read below for a few more details.
“The key here is to build a camaraderie among the students so that they do what ARML intended -- make meaningful in-person connections while doing significant mathematics.” -- George Reuter, former lead coach of the Upstate New York Math Team, current President of NYSML, and Vice President of ARML.
2023 ARML Team members and alternates:
Andrew Jiang, Anson Man, Athena Nie, Celene Sahoo, David Cong, David Villani (team captain), Emily Yu, Gus Gebbie, Iris Wang, Jacob Chung, James Lian, Jason Lian, June Park, Kenneth Ren, Mason Eyler, Maureen Zhang, Michael Wang, Paul Di Folco, and Taran Knutson.
Coaches and Volunteers at ARML:
Allen Knutson, Anna Gebbie, Anthony Villani, David Chung, Japheth Wood, Matthew Babbitt (remote support), Suvendu Sahoo, and Zsuzsa Marchl.
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