South’s math team made history after winning their conference tournament earlier in the month. The team scored in every category, which included at least three individual test per grade level, the eight-person team, and the calculator team. This is a significant improvement from last year, where they only landed third place, missing second by a very wide margin.

The entire team did very well, according to the coaches. Individually, junior Maritza Gallegos received perfect scores on two out of three individual tests, and senior Alex Hurtado earned perfect scores on an individual test as well as participated in both the eight-person team and the calculator team.

Gallego credits the team’s improvement to the current head coach: Daniel Sourile. This is Sourile’s second year at the helm. After carefully studying the team last year, he brought in new ways to prepare for events in hopes to boost their score.

“This year we did a lot more. We actually held practices for all the events for the first time ever and we tested to get into the events,” Gallegos said. At these practices, students can directly ask the coaches questions and have a chance to practice with old math team problems.

“The kids on the math team are always really eager to do the problems, which is nice because not everyone is eager to try a math problem,” Jacqueline Finley, junior coach, said. Both Finley and Sourile express how exciting it is for them to see kids have a passion for math.

Sourile says the next big goal for the team is to place first at regionals, which would ensure the entire team a spot at state. First, they have two more regular tournaments to win.