The Barrington High School math team rebounded from a slow start to the season and won the Rhode Island Math League State Championship.

Barrington finished with 138 points, well-ahead of second place Wheeler (128 points), third place East Greenwich (111 points) and the rest of the field. 

The victory extended an impressive run for Barrington over the last two and a half decades. According to Barrington High School math department chair and math team coach Bob Marley, BHS has won 22 math state titles in the last 26 years. 

“This is my 20th year coaching, and this team ranks as one of the top-three we’ve ever had,” Marley said. “(T)hey got a score of 367 points for the season and tied a record set by the 2006 Barrington team. It’s the highest mark we’ve ever had… it’s a state record. These guys tied the state record this year.”

Noah Higbie, Athena Gao, Iris Yang, Siddharth Gupta, Sophia Gao and Montana Wells served as Barrington’s A Team in the math league competitions this season. 

“They have personality. Obviously they’re super smart, the brightest kids in the school, but they’re fun and they do have a great sense of humor,” Marley said. “What’s great about this group is that I started working with them when they were in sixth grade.”

Marley said he worked with middle school math teacher Sarah Orrall over the years and has followed the students’ progress.

“I am going to miss this group. I can remember Athena as a sixth-grader. Just a sponge. Couldn’t get enough problems. I remember Iris as a sixth-grader being one of the top in the state for MathCounts,” Marley said. “Lots of great memories with them. I have another year with Iris. We will miss Noah. We’ll miss Athena and we’ll miss a number of other students that we have on the math team.”

The Barrington team put forth an impressive effort at the state finals, Marley said. 

“It was close throughout the first half of the meet,” Marley said. “But one of the rounds is called the Relay Round, where the students have to get an answer and pass that answer back to the student behind them. That student uses that answer to get the next answer and whoever finishes the relay first scores a certain amount of points. And we outscored Wheeler in that round, which really made the difference. 

“They (Wheeler) beat us by one point last year. We were missing Iris last year, due to a skating competition she had. But we still could have won it last year. It was super, super close. I was nervous this year just because how close it was last year. Not to mention Wheeler beat us in a few regular season meets this year. But we were able to overcome that, and by the end of the regular season, set the record for points and then went onto win the states.”

Individual members of the Barrington High School math team were presented with trophies for placing in the top 10 in the state this year. Iris Yang had the highest score in the state with a perfect score of 72 points. Iris made history with the perfect score — she  is one of only six students to accomplish this feat over the past 25 years. 

Barrington High School’s Montana Wells (freshman) placed fourth with 67 points, while Noah Higbie (senior) and Athena Gao (senior) tied for eighth with 66 points each. 

Numbers game

Not only did Barrington High School win the math state championship this year. It also placed three teams in the top-eight in the regular season standings. The Barrington A Team tied a regular season record for points with 367, while the Barrington B Team scored 315 points and finished in third place, and the Barrington C Team scored 293 points and finished eighth. 

Marley said some of the program’s success is due to a strong math program throughout the district.

“There is a feeder, which is great. I’m lucky,” Marley said. “Once they get to the high school level we get even more kids involved… Sometimes in the middle school, they’re limited as to how many activities they can do. But we usually get 30 to 35 students doing math team, which no other school comes close to that in Rhode Island. To have 30 to 35 students coming on a weekly basis to do more math, it’s probably unheard of in a lot of other schools.”

Marley said there are a number of activities pulling on Barrington High School students these days. 

“It is getting more challenging, but we’ve been lucky to make it work. It’s putting in the time too. A lot of these students are super bright but they put in the time — more time than other kids around the state,” Marley said. 

Tops in the region

In addition to winning the math state championship, placing three teams in the top eight spots of the regular season standings, winning the regular season title and tying the all-time record for most points scored, this year’s math team also earned the title of top public high school math team in New England. 

Barrington High School scored 165 points and finished fifth in the New England Math League, trailing four private schools (Milton Academy, Cheshire Academy, AMSA Charter School, and Mass Academy of Math and Science at WPI). 

Iris Yang and Noah Higbie tallied perfect scores of 6 points. (Jacob Rasmussen, 1993-1994, and Stephen Lamontagne, 2012, were the only other students from Barrington to ever receive a perfect score.)

Athena Gao, Levon He, Dahlia Weller, Sophia Gao, Matthew Tian, Benjamin Zhang, and Montana Wells made valuable contributions to the team by recording scores of five points each, Marley said.

“In the New England Math League, we were the top public school in New England this year. Finishing fifth, with two perfect scores, which, again, has only happened four other times in the history of Barrington … in the last 40 years or so,” Marley said.

Barrington High School was one of only two Rhode Island schools to finish in the top-30 of the New England Math League. Wheeler School finished tied for 12th.