While waiting for the judges to pass along the names of the top four mathletes during Thursday’s territorial Mathcounts competition, Antilles School’s Manav Thadani got down on his knees, crossed his fingers and started praying.
"Please, please," he said. "Dream team, dream team."
Just a few minutes before, St. Thomas-St. John District math coordinator Ludence Romney Sr. had announced that two of Thadani’s teammates, Simran Mirchandani and Pooja Chainani, had earned the third and fourth highest individual rankings, leaving room for only two more of Antilles’ best to move on to the national Mathcounts competition in May. According to the Mathcounts rules, only the top four students in the territorial competition will move onto nationals, and Thadani hoped that Antilles would make a clean sweep.
The 12-year-old got his wish. Thadani’s teammate Nicholas Midler earned the second highest individual ranking, while Thadani rounded out the group in first place – not an easy feat, considering that the Antilles School seventh-grader had also been consumed for the past few weeks with practicing for the territorial spelling bee, which he also won earlier this week.
"I just tried to balance everything out," Thadani said after picking up his first-place trophy Thursday. He explained that winning both competitions had been a dream of his since elementary school, and he had been determined to put in the extra time for studying and practice. Thadani said that he was also on last year’s territorial Mathcounts team and that his other goal was to make it to nationals three years in a row.
"There’s only one other student to have made it to national Mathcounts for three straight years," Thadani said, crediting Antilles’ Jordan Ladd – who is now a senior at the school – for helping to prep him for the competition along with his coach, Michele Garcia.
"You earn a scholarship if you’re able to do that, and I’m going to be the next one, definitely,” Thadani said. “This week, with the spelling bee and Mathcounts, it just shows that all my hard work paid off, so I’m going to keep going, as far as I can."
In between preparing for the two competitions, Thadani said he’s also going to be practicing for the school play and a junior varsity soccer competition.
"I’ll balance it all out; don’t worry," he said when asked how he plans to get everything done in the next few weeks.
Antilles School also took top team in Thursday’s competition, which puts coach Garcia in charge of the national team for the seventh straight year. Garcia said Thursday that having the team made up of students from the same school will allow practices to run smoother, allowing the students to meet in one place instead of having to do practices over the phone in order to accommodate different schedules or students living in different districts.
Garcia said that by working together the team also hopes to pick up some of the other awards handed out during national Mathcounts, such as the award for "Team Spirit" or "Most Improved Team" since the territory and Puerto Rico are historically ranked at the bottom of the pack.
"It’s high competition up there," she said. "The problems are harder and the kids answer them before they even hear the whole question."
Staying positive, however, Garcia said her students will maintain their practice schedule, which has served them well over the past few months. Since December, the team has been practicing on Saturdays, two hours on Friday and even after school.
They’ve worked out problems over the phone and even over text messages, which Garcia said she sometimes receives up until midnight.
"It feels amazing getting this far," she said. "It’s all about perseverance and putting in the time and effort needed to achieve our goals."
The team from St. Croix’s Elena Christian Junior High School took second in the team competition Thursday, with students Habeeba O’Neil and Ameera Mustafa earning the eighth and fifth highest individual rankings, respectively.
Joining them in the top eight Thursday were Jonathon Qualls (seventh place from Antilles School) and Kalahari Bryan (sixth place from St. Croix Country Day School).
Mathcounts is a national program designed to improve math skills among U.S. students. The program focuses on middle school students who are at a crucial stage in developing and sustaining math interest and ability.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the 2013 Mathcounts competition will consist of approximately 40,000 students, representing over 6,000 schools from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and schools affiliated with the national State and Defense departments.
