News Detail
Pi in the Sky: Math at the MS
When math teacher Jessica Merrick arrived at Ransom Everglades in 2021, she took the reins of the middle school math team from the legendary Ginny Onorati, who had retired that spring after 47 years at RE. Merrick inherited a young and inexperienced squad populated in part by sixth-grade students who, like Merrick, were new to the RE community.
Despite its youth, RE’s middle school math team – featuring three precocious then-sixth graders Joshie Khohayting ’28, Daniel Li ’28 and Alex Tevelow ’28 – not only advanced to the 2022 state championship in Jacksonville, but also scored an impressive 10th-place finish competing against teams of mostly eighth graders.
That’s when Merrick knew she was in for an exciting ride with the middle school math team.
Three years later, she’s had even more fun than she ever imagined. Last spring concluded a thrilling run of success that culminated in back-to-back runner-up finishes in the state math championships after finishing first – for two straight years – at the regional Mathcounts event at Florida International University.
“It was the perfect combination of hard work, kids really wanting it, and teamwork.”
Jessica Merrick, 2023-24 math team coach
In March, as the competitive season concluded, Li qualified for the elite Florida math team selected to compete in the 2024 RTX Mathcounts National Competition, and Merrick was named head coach – both significant firsts for Ransom Everglades. Together, they helped the Florida team achieve a fifth-place team finish at the national championship in Washington, D.C., and Merrick coached the individual national champion.
With all of those accomplishments, and many more, the 2024-25 season ranked as arguably the RE middle school math team’s best year ever.
“Our team really clicked from day one,” Tevelow said. “We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and helped each other get better by pushing each other where we needed it … The camaraderie made me enjoy math even more.”
“Our team really clicked from day one,” Tevelow said. “We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and helped each other get better by pushing each other where we needed it … The camaraderie made me enjoy math even more.”
Indeed, the RE mathletes had fun together, working diligently as a team and cheering each other’s successes. Under the direction of Merrick and assistant coach Ed Lally, they lived RE’s core values of support and community, joy and wellbeing, and honor and excellence.
“The camaraderie made me enjoy math even more.”
Alex Tevelow '28
“It was the perfect combination of hard work, kids really wanting it, and teamwork,” said Merrick, now Assistant Head of the Middle School. “The fact that we had such a solid team that supported each other is the reason they did so well … I sat there and was the cheerleader.”
The math team members practiced every other day leading up to the state championship. As the students worked together, their friendship deepened. They took individual practice tests and engaged in many team-round practices. Merrick and Lally video-recorded those team rounds and they and their students watched, critiquing their performances.
“The closeness of the team meant that we worked well with each other and were able to communicate a lot, which helped us solve many of the team round problems,” Li said.
Added Tevelow: “The coaches were the most important part of our success. They created a very supportive environment for us to thrive as a team ... We knew they were rooting for us, and we really felt that.”
The students also drew inspiration from Khohayting’s father, Jerome Suntay Khohayting, a mathematician who won a silver medal in 1989 in the International Mathematical Olympiad. He met with the team, helping the students work through problems and offering encouragement. Li also had the chance to engage with Scott Wu, the co-founder of Cognition AI who won the Mathcounts individual national championship in 2011. Wu addressed the Florida state team in advance of its fifth-place team and first-place individual finishes at nationals.
Both former champions offered advice and provided a confidence boost.
RE’s mathletes responded by working hard.
“You have no idea how much time we put into it,” Merrick said. “We knew we had a chance to win, so we went all out preparing. The kids loved it. Math team was their ‘sport.’”
At the regional Mathcounts event, Khohayting earned second place in the individual event; Tevelow finished third; Li, fourth; Sofiya Dewan ’29, 12th; and Maxie Wu ’28, 13th. In a national math competition for middle school students – the Noetic Learning Math Contest – Li, Dewan, Khohayting and Tevelow received perfect scores. They were joined by Trevor Thomas ’29, Jeffrey Tong ’28 and Wu on the National Honor Roll while Esha Nagalla ’29, Ria Bhandari ’28, Matias Lopez-Ona ’28, Andrea Medina ’28 and Parker Schimel ’28 earned honorable mention.
And in a county math competition for girls – INTEGIRLS Miami Spring 2024 – Wu finished first and Dewan finished second in the middle school individual event and, in the middle school team competition, Wu, Dewan, Medina and Nagalla claimed first place, and Maya Lee-Schonfeld ’30, Bhandari and Alyssa Wang ’30 took second.
The team’s middle school triumphs carry over to opportunities at the upper school; in 2023, Solon Sun ’25 became only the second Ransom Everglades student ever to qualify for the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad (John Mistele ’17 was the other) and Andrew Gedde ’25 won the state championship in the open probability division. Upper schoolers also claimed a host of successes in 2023-24 under coach Brittney Ellzey Mujica, and have high hopes for the coming season.
“Math team was one of the highlights of my middle school experience,” said Tevelow, now in the ninth grade, “and I feel lucky to have been a part of this great group of teammates and incredible coaches!”
Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.