As the rest of the clubs scramble to find a solution to meeting around COVID-19, the Wayland High School Math Club members huddle together, trying to find the solution to their latest math problem.

Senior captains Hannah Han, June Kim and Kevin Zhao, along with junior captain Jeffrey Huang, lead weekly Thursday meetings in Room B136 until around 4:15 p.m. Practices are relatively laid-back, where students are encouraged to work on problems by themselves or with friends.

“The members are all very kind and inclusive,” sophomore Brendan Shen said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a new member or a regular because it is a great place to spend some time after school with friends.”

As with all other extracurricular activities at WHS, math team has also been negatively affected by COVID-19. Before, the club traveled to different schools for their competitions. Now, all meets take place once a month in room 136 during the weekly practice.

“[Before COVID-19 hit], we would have five meets at different schools, and then we’d qualify for the state meet every year,” math team advisor Hannah Marton said. “[We’d also] often even [qualify] for the New England meet. I am not sure if we are going to have our state meet this year. We didn’t have it last year, and we didn’t have it in 2020 either.”

At each meet, there are two official teams, the A team and the B team. Students who want to compete, but are not in the A or B team, are allowed to compete as alternates. Each team is composed of five students.

“There are five rounds and every student competes in three of the five rounds,” Marton said. “Every round has to have three students. The theme round at the end of the meet is when the five students work together to solve three problems in 12 minutes. The regular rounds are 10 minutes long.”

So far, the math team has participated in four out of five Greater Boston Math League meets, with Zhao, Huang and Shen scoring full points at certain events.

“[Since] the contests are not live, each school [including Newton South, Wellesley, Concord Carlisle and Boston Latin] take a chunk of time to complete all the rounds and submit their results to G-B-M-L, who posts the results on their website,” Shen said.

Although the problems are rigorous and the competitions are intense, there are no prerequisites to joining. With membership from all four grade levels, each student is taking a different level math class in school. The varying levels of experience is what contributes to the warm environment as the older students often help teach the younger ones.

“At Math Team, you’re sure to encounter hard problems and discover new methods to solve them,” Han said. “Furthermore, you do problems from all sorts of categories, including algebra, geometry, counting and probability and calculus. As you improve your math skills, you can apply what you’ve learned in all of your math classes.”

Another attractive feature about the math team is the relatively low commitment. Students that are concerned about conflict with other sports and clubs are still allowed to join, even if their attendance is spotty.

“Unlike in the case of sports teams, you don’t have to fully commit to the math team,” Marton said. “You can come when you can, drop by, do some problems and come one week, but not the next if you can’t. Some students come only in the spring or the fall because they play sports in the other seasons.”