Maths: easy as pi

St Peters WaiMaths team, from left, Samuel Moriarty, Amirdha Kanchi and Leon Lee.

Samuel Moriarty plus Amirdha Kanchi plus Leon Lee equalled victory for St Peter’s Cambridge at this year’s WaiMaths Quiz at the University of Waikato.

The trio beat 14 other year 11 teams, edging out Hillcrest High School by just one point to claim the shield.

WaiMaths, a regional mathematics competition organised by the Waikato Mathematical Association, is held annually for year 7-11 students.

In the briefest of interviews, Leon said he was “excited” to win before being whipped off by his proud mother to be photographed with friends.

Samuel, 15, said the mental showdown had been “stressful” so he was also excited to win with a score of 44/60.

His team, which practised every week from midway through term 2, has been together for three years and has been consistently ahead of the Waimaths curve, placing first in year 9 in 2021 and second in year 10 in 2022.

St Peter’s year 9 team, Jaden Heerikhuizen, Madeline Butler and McKenzie Worthington, and year 10 team, Yiran Jiang, Juliet McGuire and Lachie Wallace, also did well, both placing fifth out of 17.

Cambridge High School sent year 9, 10 and 11 teams to the quiz.

Year 9 student Flynn Jenkins said he and his teammates Theo Goodwin and Ryan Littlejohn were “quite surprised” to finish 6th after doing “about 10 minutes” of practice.

Cambridge High’s year 10 team Georgia Bertrand, Max Frith and Hunter David, finished in the top half of the quiz and its year 11 team, Bronwen Rees-Jones, Hannah Goodwin and Jake Wilson, finished 8th.

Cambridge Middle School’s year 7 team, Freddie Fulforth, Smith Bosacker and Angus Clarke, was fifth and in the year 8 team event, Isaac Comins, Cayla Buitendach and Alex Kim, placed seventh.