In late June, a team of Harker rising juniors took second place overall in the 9/10 level at the national TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition in Grapevine, Texas. The team of Kai-Siang Ang, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and team captain David Zhu also finished second in the problem solving competition and were among the top 10 teams in the prepared presentation portion of the event. “The team had the best showing yet of any Harker team who has competed in this event,” said Harker math teacher Anthony Silk, who coached the team.

The TEAMS competition begins every year at the state level, in which students answer multiple-choice math and science questions, as well as essay questions related to the year’s chosen topic. The top three teams from each state are then invited to the national competition, which has categories for written problems, prepared presentation and problem solving.