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Gainesville, Florida, April 18, 2025— Nineteen members of the Buchholz High School math team participated at the 48^th Annual Mu Alpha Theta State Convention April 4 to 6 in Orlando, Florida.  The students were honored with several awards during the Awards Ceremony held on April 5^th.  The conference was attended by thirty-four schools and over eight hundred and fifty students.

Buchholz High School ranked seventh in the overall sweepstakes.  Buchholz was recognized for the following team efforts: Theta (Geometry and Algebra 2) 8^th place, Alpha (PreCalc) 6^th place, and Stats 9^th place.  The other team efforts recognized with awards were Hustle (team members Emily Lu, Keith Zheng, Eddie Yuan and Daniel Zhang) 9^th place and Relay (team members Adrian Palamarev, Isa Vora and Mario Duron) 2^nd place.  Individual award winners were Mario Duron for Theta Ciphering (19^th), Theta Applications (8^th) and Theta Equations and Inequalities (14^th); Isa Vora for Alpha Ciphering (11^th), Alpha Applications (10^th), Alpha Individual (22^nd) and Alpha Trigonometry (4^th); Adrian Palamarev for Mu Ciphering (17^th), Mu BC Calculus (7^th), Mental Math (9^th) and Mu Sequences and Series (4^th); Daniel Zhang for Alpha Analytic Geometry (13^th), and Alpha Matrices and Vectors (15^th); Eddie Yuan for Mu Integration (16^th) and Mu Limits and Derivatives (12^th).

The two seniors who applied for scholarships were both honored with the prestigious awards.  Adrian Palamarev won a $5,000 award and Emily Lu won a $4,000 award.  These students were presented with their scholarship letters and certificates by Principal Kevin Purvis and math team sponsor Michele Brothers on April 18^th.

When the team placed in the top ten overall Saturday evening, Miss Brothers had to text them a huge CONGRATULATIONS as she was in New York City on the Academy of Finance Senior trip.  Both Miss Brothers, math team sponsor, and Mr. Sage Bachus, math team coach, could not have been prouder of this team with many students being first time math team participants.  “There is a lot to learn about math competitions from the topic tests to the ciphering and division tests.  This year’s Buchholz math team students did not have math team classes to help teach strategies and math competition style questions like past Buchholz teams and some of the teams at the competition have.  These students put in after school and vacation time practicing and studying”, said Michele Brothers.  “This is a special group”.

Buchholz Math Team State Participants, front row: Adrian Palamarev, Isa Vora, Daniel Zhang and Vincent Nguyen; back row: Luke Geltner, Annika Caedington, Eddie Yuan, William Bigger, Dr. Vora, Matthew Hennig, Mario Duron, Morgan Stephens, Billy Allen, Keith Zheng, Alex Xiong, Rafaela Lopes da Fonseca, Liren Yang, and Amy Xiao.  Missing: Stuart Ding and Emily Lu.