As a kick-off for this academic year, we held a virtual Welcome Back Open House for the Upstate New York Math Team this morning. Here are the slides and a summary.
A big shout out to Coach Mabbitt, who prepared the slides using the LaTeX Beamer package. Math team students often learn to use the math typesetting language LaTeX, which has become the standard in the math research community and also has a strong following in Computer Science, Physics, and other fields.
Our Math Team has existed since around 1980, and reorganized as a 501c3 nonprofit in 2022. Our board members come from all over Upstate New York.
This year, our coaching team includes Pranav and Finn, led by head coach Mabbitt.
Did I mention that we’re entirely volunteer driven? Our 2026 ARML team was assisted by 13 parent volunteers and four coaches.
We also had the support of a volunteer Team Selection Committee, volunteers who coordinated our travel contests, and our fundraising efforts (more about that later).
Would you like to volunteer with the Upstate New York Math Team this year? We have a Volunteer survey at dub.sh/VolunteerSurvey. We’re always looking for support from the community.
Here are some of our favorite moments last year.
At the Cornell University Big Red Math Competition, we had team members on several high school and league teams. We were able to gather several Upstate students whose schools and regions don’t have a team.
Sign up for this year’s CUBRMC! https://www.bigredmathcomp.org/
Date: Saturday, October 24, 2026
We also traveled to Princeton University for PUMAC, and to HMMT. One of our ARML team members made it to the new American Masters of Mathematics contest.
Our biggest event each year is ARML, and we fielded two teams in 2026, Vector and Manifold. This event attracts thousands of mathletes from across the country. Not to be missed!
Here’s our plan for this year. If your high school or regional team competes, that is wonderful, and we require you to participate with them. That’s why we don’t field teams for the Purple Comet contest or for NYSML.
Our top contest, by far, is ARML, which will take place on Saturday, June 5, 2027.
Have you heard of the American Masters of Mathematics? They started in May, 2026 with a proof-based contest in Denver, Colorado. This year they’re rolling out an additional local event. Join us at the anticipated sites in Upstate New York!
We’d love to send our team to more contests. Can you help?
We have a lot planned for this year. Visit dub.sh/UpstatePractices for our schedule of talks and practices. We’re also piloting book clubs, and are considering the following titles:
Euler: The Master of Us All, by William Dunham
Naive Lie Theory, by John Stillwell
Euclidean Geometry in Mathematical Olympiads by Evan Chen
The Art of Problem Solving, Volume 1 by Sandor Lehoczky and Richard Rusczyk
Take the survey at dub.sh/UpstateBookClub if you’re interested in joining us!
Here are some other updates. We’ve migrated our website from Squarespace, then a Google site, and now to Substack. The Substack platform will also handle our email newsletter needs. Please visit www.upstatenymath.org and subscribe!
As mentioned above, we’ll be fundraising. I hope that you support our growth!
I’d like you to imagine what the Upstate New York Math Team could be. We serve an enormous region that is full of amazing students. We live in cities, in small towns, and rural areas. The population of Upstate New York is comparable to that of the New York City metropolitan area. What could our team become? We’d love to build a shared vision with you.
If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to our webpage and newsletters at www.upstatenymath.org. If you are a high school math student in Upstate New York, we also welcome you to join our Discord server.
On behalf of the Upstate New York Math Team, thanks for being part of our math enrichment community!
–Japheth