Diamond Bar High School’s math team competed in the Open Division of the Math Madness competition for the first time, finishing the competition with a ranking in the top 20 nationally.

“I was very pleasantly surprised at how the team did this year,” senior president Matthew Ho said. “I knew that we had a pretty strong team.”

The team qualified for elimination rounds by being one of the 16 teams left out of more than 500 teams competing.

During regular season, the math team defeated Webb 40-27, Harvard Westlake 38-33 and St. Andrews in Georgia 34-19.

In playoffs, the team won against Crean High School 31-24 in the first round, and against George School in Pennsylvania 32-23 in the second round, allowing them to advance to the Sweet 16.

Then, DBHS went against William G. Enloe Magnet High School in North Carolina, losing 39-21. Each team member had 30 minutes to answer eight questions.

The top five scores from each team were tallied up for a maximum of 40 points.

“At that level across the nation, when you are in the top 16, every single school is really good, so we knew that we were going to have a really tough match,” advisor Jeff Brose said.

Ho stated that the main reason for the team’s success this year was the implementation of weekly review sessions, led by math team officers.

Review sessions were held during lunch each Thursday to prepare for upcoming rounds, which were hosted on Wednesdays in the LINC.

Each session lasted 20 to 40 minutes depending on the difficulty or quantity of problems from the previous competition.

“I think making it to the Sweet 16 was really tremendous, and this year most people thought we would be worse since we lost a really good participant,” Brose said. “We did better this year and it just shows that the strength of the whole program is what’s important.”