Math Team Nationals 2025: Orlando!
- Vestavia Pillar
- Sep 22
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 22
By: Grace Ding and Alan Sheng
After having routine summer practices, spending a weekend on a bus, and checking into the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, the Vestavia Hills Math Team has arrived at their biggest event of the year: the Mu Alpha Theta National Math Convention. They’re ready to dominate the competition, experience the best theme parks in the country, and make memories for a lifetime!
Now, imagine over a thousand students, teachers, and parents from Hawaii to Maine filing into one massive room for the convention’s opening ceremony. It was just as surreal as you’d expect, featuring encounters with old friends from other schools, seminars by renowned speakers like Professor Po-Shen Loh, and the annual trivia showdown. As the festivities wound down, students began preparing for the competition in the coming days.
But this isn’t any normal competition—it’s the biggest southern national math tournament. How does it differ from the local and regional ones that the Rebels normally travel to?
First, there are usually three divisions: Theta (geometry and algebra II), Alpha (precalculus), and Mu (comprehensive). But this year, they reintroduced a fourth division: Statistics! However, this convention’s uniqueness really comes down to the variety of events that the convention has to offer its participants. Here’s a breakdown of a handful of them:
Topic Tests: There are three topic test days, where each student has a few options for which one to take on each day. Their division will offer two to three tests each day, and there are also a few “open tests” that students from any division can select. Each of these topic tests has awards for the top 15 competitors.
Individual Tests: Each division has its own individual test, pitting the best students of each division against each other on one intense test combining concepts and problems from all across their field of mathematics. For their hard work, the top 20 students are awarded.
Hustle and Relay: Each school can only send one team for each of these events, hustle allowing four students and relay allowing three students.
Hustle has five rounds of five minutes each, which all happen consecutively without breaks. Each round, the four students work furiously to submit five questions for each of the five topics (geometry, algebra II, precalculus, calculus, and statistics). Grace can testify that this is an intense 25-minute event where school practices prior to the competition were a must.
The Relay Test gives its competitors a whole lot more time, but the intensity doesn’t dwindle even a bit. For each of the nine rounds, the three students on a team get 6 minutes total to answer a set of three questions. The geometry or algebra II student solves the first problem. Then, they pass it back to the next student, who uses the first answer to solve their own problem. This process continues one more time until all three problems have been answered. The Relay Test’s name speaks for itself—in a track relay, if just ONE member drops the baton, the whole team is disqualified. Likewise, one wrong answer ruins the whole team’s chances.
Chalk Talk: Think of a mini TED Talk, but centered around one creative math problem. Tina Lou, Mariam Malik, and Kaylee Zhao represented Vestavia Hills in this event. Each in their own division, they competed based on specific criteria against other participants’ speeches. Finals were hosted at this convention, and the participants qualified prior to the convention based on recordings of their talk. At the convention, anyone was welcome to come watch a talk and learn more interactively!
Mystery Test: Taken at 9:30 pm by every participant, this test was pretty controversial. What is a “mystery test”? Well, this time, it was like a comic book with riddles on every page that depended on answers from other pages! However, next time you see a “mystery test” scheduled, chances are that it will be something entirely different…
School Bowl: Based on individual tests and ciphering, each school’s bowl team per division is made up of four students. On the final test day, these teams collaborate on multi-part questions and work to beat other school bowl teams. All the divisions tested together, and the leaderboard gave live updates, raising the stakes more and more as time went on.
Gemini: Essentially, the redemption arc for anyone at the competition. Students who don’t make the school bowl team can partner up and go for a medal in a hybrid team-individual test. Even though the best scorers on the individual tests are taken out of the equation for this round, the competition is as fierce as ever.
Interschool: “Two heads are better than one.” Actually, at nationals, a hundred heads are a LOT better than one. Believe it or not, there exists a competition where your entire school (including sponsors) can work together! In this year’s version, each school sends one student to start the event. Then, as they answer buy-in questions, they literally unlock more teammates, just like a tycoon game. As more of the team becomes available to help, the attention shifts to the actual interschool test, a mix of trivia, tedious calculation questions, and complex exploratory questions designed for multiple brains put together. Vestavia placed 3rd this year!
Poster: Based on a theme announced at the opening ceremony, each school is allowed to submit one poster. Students had to work together despite the busy schedule to get creative! Eric Li might be able to give you a story about the all-nighter he pulled, making the finishing touches on the drawing, along with the rest of the amazing poster team featured in the photo below! Vestavia ended up claiming the fifth-place prize because of their hard work!
Festivities
Well, that seems like a lot of competitions that students had to juggle; on the second day, some Vestavia competitors had five events!
But have no fear! There was plenty of time to make memories with friends and meet new people. Day three was completely a theme park day! The Vestavia team chose to go to Universal, so from Harry Potter Land to Jurassic Park, there was something for everyone. It was the perfect break between the convention’s events, and it was just part of the reward of a year-long endeavor.
The days throughout the week were filled with all kinds of excursions and activities. A visit to the nearby Activate, trips around the city, yoga sessions at 4 AM, Top Golf, long pool nights, movies, and more were all just a few of the many shenanigans from the Vestavia Math Team during the trip!
After the grueling, hectic, but rewarding week of nationals, the team got a chance to spend a full day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park. Tomorrowland offered crazy rides like Tron and Space Mountain, Adventureland was full of both peaceful boat tours and 40-foot drops that soaked you all over, and Fantasyland offered some classic Disney experiences. Everyone was scattered across the theme park, but at the end of the night, the Disney castle fireworks show began, and the whole team reunited to watch a dazzling display in the sky.
Conclusion
In the end, Vestavia Hills won the 4th-place title in sweepstakes with 88 total top-20 placements across all events. In addition, three of our students claimed a national champion title: Grace Ding, Alan Sheng, and Timothy Li!
What’s up with the team right now? Well, they’re gearing up for the upcoming season with State in February and various regional competitions throughout. Finally, Mr. Taylor, our Algebra II and Precalculus math team sponsor, is organizing the MAO National Convention 2026 at Frisco, Texas.
In just a few months, the Vestavia mathletes will be en route to Cowboy Central!
Go Rebels!
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