Each year, Trinity College School students join peers from around the world to take on the challenge of writing math contests hosted by the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC). Over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year, 134 contests were written by TCS “mathletes,” landing the School in the top three overall in our geographic zone on six of the nine high school level contests. At morning chapel service on Thursday, May 25th, the Senior School math department was pleased to recognize all students who participated in the math contests and present awards to those with top scores.

Students who scored in the top 25% of all contestants around the world received a Certificate of Distinction, as well as a math lapel pin. Gold pins were presented to top students who have earned Distinction in a previous contest(s) or year(s). As well, a medal was presented to the top score at TCS (school champion) in each contest.

The math contest season begins in the fall, when students who have had previous success in contests are invited to write the Canadian Intermediate and Senior Mathematics Challenges. At the intermediate level, the top five TCS participants were Alex Tang, Landon Demrovsky, Roger Zhang, Eason Fan, Arjun Sharma and Nicolas Shi (school champion in this contest for the second year in a row). Their combined results earned TCS the silver medal in our zone. At the senior level, our top five students earned TCS the bronze zone medal. They are: Christina Jia, Jack Sprayson, Oliver Lynn, Tae-Kyeong Kim and Eric Jin (school champion).

A grand total of 25 students wrote the Pascal (Grade 9) Contest in February, with Distinction earned by Connor Demrovsky, Jeffrey Yuan and Risi Chen (school champion). Students who performed well on the Pascal were invited to write the Grade 9 problem-solving challenge, the Fryer Contest. Riley McKernan earned Distinction, as did our school champion, Connor Demrovsky. Of note, both Jeffrey Yuan and Connor Demrovsky are Grade 8 students from the Junior School!

At the Grade 10 level, an amazing 10 students earned Distinction on the Cayley Contest: Dexton Grant, Charlotte Chan, Jerry Wang, Rebecca Zhang, Landon Demrovsky, Arjun Sharma, Iris Lu, Michelle Kim, Roger Zhang and Matvii Kutakh (school champion). The top three results earned TCS the silver medal in our zone. These students moved on to write the challenging Galois Contest and earned TCS zone champion status! Earning Distinction were Roger Zhang and, in a tie for school champion, William Liu and Arjun Sharma.

Our students produced strong results on the Grade 11 Fermat Contest, with five Distinction recipients: Celina Zhou, Alex Tang, Jennifer Zhang, Eric Jin and Nicolas Shi (school champion). Top scorers advanced to the Hypatia Contest, winning TCS the zone championship in this problem-solving challenge. Earning Distinction were Celina Zhou, Christina Jia, Jerry Chen, Eric Jin and Nicolas Shi (school champion).

A determined group of 28 students wrote the longest (2.5 hours!) and most challenging of the problem-solving contests – the Grade 12 Euclid. Three of these students scored in the top 25% amongst the more than 21,000 young people who wrote this contest globally. In third place at TCS was Jack Sprayson, a past Euclid school champion. In second place was Christina Jia, a Grade 11 student. And our school champion was, once again, Nicolas Shi. This was Nicolas’ fourth school champion title this year, a feat all the more incredible because he is a Grade 10 student.

We would also like to take a moment to recognize those students who earned Distinction on the CEMC’s Canadian Computing Competition, written in February: Tae-Kyeong Kim, Nicolas Shi, Arjun Sharma, Eric Jin, Landon Demrovsky, Dexton Grant, Jack Sprayson, Jonathan Zhang and Sajal Billing.

Congratulations to all of the award recipients, and to every student who took on the challenge of writing the CEMC contests this year!