Counting victories

Coeur d’Alene High School students quashed a rivalry Tuesday in a decisive victory over Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy in the 40th annual Math Contest at North Idaho College.

“I’m really competitive so I told them we have to win this year,” CHS math teacher Kari Tapia said. 

Last year, her students lost the team competition in a tie breaker to Coeur d’Alene Charter. Over the last 10 years, Coeur d'Alene Charter has won the team competitions, said Virginia Hammond from Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy. 

Tapia's team has lost the team competition four times by one point, she said. So this year she brought her students ready to win. 

“They’re all like the best of the best, the top of the class,” Tapia said. “They’re just as competitive as I am … and they know that I’m here to win.”

And win they did. 

The CHS team won first place in Division 1 for the team competition with Atlas Zastrow, Lukas Scarborough, Andrew Mazzarella and Jameson Dale on the winning team. CHS also won five out of the six top places for individual competition, with Coeur d’Alene Charter’s Henry DePew placing third among seniors. First and second place for seniors went to Lukas Scarborough and Isabella Le. Juniors first through third places went to CHS’s Adeline Smith, Atlas Zastrow and Isaac Thorpe. 

The path to victory in the team competition was years in the making for Tapia and her students. Atlas was competing for the second year in a row and brought experience to the team. This year he got a question right that he missed last year in the tiebreaker. 

Coeur d'Alene Charter was competing this year with younger students, Hammond said, against more experienced students at CHS. 

Tapia works every year to get better, to help her students study and to find new ways to improve. 

“We studied old NIC tests,” she said. “We’ve been coming for a while so we’ll look at the old tests and then we’ll study them and they’ll work together and they’ll talk through the problems.”

Her students do speed tests and spend time after school working to excel. She teaches them Math classes 1 through 3, honors math, AP calculus AB and BC so students get to know Tapia and she gets to know them. 

“We have a really good relationship,” Tapia said. “They’re a super fun group, it’s awesome. I did not make them come, I had students that wanted to come but they couldn’t come because we didn’t have enough room.” 

Over 110 students from nine schools were bussed in to compete at the annual competition, each of them feeling excited and prepared to compete. 

“I definitely love math passionately, I gotta say,” said Post Falls senior Cavin Cook. “I think I did incredibly, hopefully. Ideally I got all of them right and then they have to redo the rules of ‘well nobody gets all of them right.’” 

And the prizes weren’t just the bragging rights but also a tuition waiver and a set of AirPods for first-place wins. 

The nine schools competing also included Post Falls, Lakeland, Timberlake and Lake City high schools, and Kootenai Senior, STEM Charter Academy and Classical Christian Academy. 

The Division 2 team to win the team competition was STEM Charter Academy. 

The Division 2 seniors that won were Alijah Freeman from STEM Charter in first place, who scored highest overall in the competition; Michael Bell from Classical Christian Academy in second, and Elaine Park from STEM Charter in third. In Division 2 juniors, Blaise Krombein from Classical Christian Academy took first place, Amy McCune from Timberlake High School placed second, and Rush Gustafson from STEM Charter placed third. 

Each winner received a plaque and a flash drive, the senior first place winners received Apple AirPods and the junior first place winners received graphing calculators. 

    Cavin Cook begins work on a math test Tuesday to compete in the 40th annual North Idaho College Math Contest.

  

    From left, Mica Collins, Alijah Freeman, Rush Gustafson and Zach Cook play a game of pool during lunch at the North Idaho College Math Contest. STEM Charter Academy senior Alijah had the highest score across both divisions in all grades.