by Jim Boyle
Editor
Jordan Haack set his sights on a top-three finish in the state math bowl, but shot right past that en route to two state championship titles March 9 at South St. Paul High School.
Submitted photo
State champion mathematician Jordan Haack.
He won both the individual championship and the title of overall champ when the scores of both the state tournament contests and the rest of the year were combined.
“I didn’t expect to win,” Haack told the Star News. “These things are prone to huge ties. Somehow, I got ahead of that.”
Haack’s next closest finishers ended up in a three-way tie for second place in both tournament totals and grand totals for the year.
The Elk River math team finished 12th at state and 15th overall for the year.
Haack, an Elk River High School senior and National Merit Scholar semifinalist, has shifted to his last year of varsity tennis on a team that finished fourth in state last year. By the end of April he and several other classmates will face off Moody’s Mega Math Challenge, an annual applied math contest that gives participants the opportunity to use mathematical modeling to come up with solutions to relevant everyday issues. Haack’s team is one of six finalists that will compete Monday, April 27, in the final phase of judging at Moody’s Corporation headquarters in Manhattan, where they will present their findings to a panel of professional applied mathematician judges to determine the final rank order. (More on that will follow in a future edition of the Star News.)
The all-conference tennis player held the No. 4 singles slot and finished 31-6 on the year. This year he is a captain on the team.
Left to right: Haley Yoder, Mary Stoutenburg, Hunter Gulbranson, Jordan Haack, Joe Evans, Brianna Gerold, Emily Sederstrom, Alex Christensen and Curt Michener.
He has missed a few early season practices for math bowls, something his tennis coach might find aggravating but did not phase Haack.
“Tennis is good, but it’s not my future,” he said.
Haack, the son of physical therapists Dan and Laura Haack, is waiting to find out how he fares on college applications to Ivy League schools.
“I’m not so convinced that’s going to happen now, but I will find out in the next two weeks or so (where he’s been accepted),” he said.
Haack, 17, envisions pursuing math in college, which will give him an array of career fields to choose from, ranging from college professor to an actuary.
The contender for valedictorian at Elk River High School realized his potential as a mathematician in the ninth grade under the tutelage of Elk River High School math team adviser Curt Michener.
“I have a lot to thank him for,” Haack said of Michener.
“He got me started. He taught me all the tricks.”
The math league exists to identify students with unusual mathematical ability, to give them recognition and encouragement, to bring them together with similar students for mutual challenge and to expose them to the study of topics not commonly taught in the high school curriculum.
It often takes some coaxing to get kids on math teams, but Elk River has developed a strong program, and members, like Haack, seem to get hooked and stay.
By his sophomore year, the star of the Elks team was ready to step up his efforts and took to using study halls and Sunday evenings before math contests to complete practice tests.
Don’t be confused by Haack’s choice of study hall for a class period. He earned the room in his schedule by taking a full complement of University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program courses, which are part of an accelerated program for students who are highly talented in mathematics. He earned honors level college credit and advanced through it to Calculus III. He finished the university program this past year and knuckled down even more this season on math league as a top-three finish came into his consciousness.
“I really wanted it,” he said. “So I put my head down and went for it.”
Michener said becoming a state champion requires hard work and dedication to outperform incredibly gifted students, he said.
“I never met anybody who wanted to work that hard for something,” Michener said. “Just working with him caused me to be a better person myself.”
Haack won the first round, an invitational contest featuring the top high school mathematicians in the state, by an amazing two-point margin.
The only setback of the state meet would come on a speed round, featuring the top 10 finishers from the opening round. This was done on a stage in front of an audience. Each contestant was given eight problems and a short amount of time to answer each of them. Haack got the first seven right, tied for first, and on the last question, he missed.
He rallied, however, to get perfect scores on the final two tests that were partly for the team portion of the tournament.
Haack and his teammates, who were making the school’s fifth consecutive appearance at state, finished near the top third overall out of 39 teams that were invited to compete.
“That was lower than the ninth-place finish (of 170 teams) during the regular season, but still a very solid effort,” Michener said.
Members of the team included Haack, Bri Gerold, Hunter Gulbranson, Emily Sederstrom, Alex Christensen, Joe Evans, Haley Yoder and Mary Stoutenberg.