Students prepare for an annual competition that focuses on modern-day challenges in science and engineering. This year’s competition will focus on global water safety and availability.

Many groups of students from all over the St. Louis area will be competing against each other at the Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics, and Science (TEAMS) on Feb. 26. With the competition date approaching, CHS students and coaches are getting ready to take on this challenge.
TEAMS is an annual theme-based competition that challenges students to solve real-world problems with the concepts that they have learned in school. Students, working together in groups of eight, have to finish two 90-minute exams: Part One consists of 80 multiple choice questions and Part Two consists of four open-ended free response questions.
The theme of this year’s competition is water.
“Water and energy will be two of our biggest concerns in the future,” said Rex Rice, coach of the TEAMS students. “I think this theme is very relevant and will raise our consciousness in these fields.”
This year, 48 to 64 top science and math students will be chosen to represent CHS in TEAMS competition. These students will then be divided into teams of eight to work together. Head coach Rex Rice and assistant coach Jennifer Adams think students can learn a lot through this experience.
“The whole competition focuses on teamwork,” Rice said. “Students also have to develop strategy to finish in the given amount of time.”
In 1993, TEAMS became a new form of competition and gained emphasis on teamwork by diverging from its previous form, Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering competition (WYSE), which is more like a test for individuals.
TEAMS requires commitment from the students. Practices start five to six weeks before the competition. For two to three times a week, students stay after school and practice by doing real exams from previous competitions.
Although TEAMS requires hours of practice each week, senior Sneha Viswanathan commits herself to TEAMS and has been participating in teams for the past three years.
“We are able to learn stuff out of class in a way that I wouldn’t learn in other activities,” Viswanathan said. “That’s why I keep coming back to TEAMS.”
Last year, the CHS teams had great success. The five CHS varsity teams claimed the top five ranks in their division for states. Varsity Team A, D, and E advanced to the nationals and Varsity Team A placed first in its division. Junior Varsity Team A, C, and B placed first, third, and forth in their division for states, with JV Team A advancing to the nationals and placing first in its division.
State ranking is determined by each team’s Part One score alone whereas national ranking is determined by combining Part One and Part Two scores.
One of the students who contributed to the success last year is junior Ikshu Neithalath.
“The reason I keep coming back to TEAMS is the blood-thirsty thrill of competition,” Neithalath said.
“Problems in TEAMS are a lot different from the problems we do in class,” Neithalath said. “They are much more relevant because they are problems that engineers deal with in the real world.”
The theme of last year’s competition was “theme park,” and the year before that was “Olympics.” Problems often cover a wide variety of topics within the given theme.
Junior Brett Downey participated in TEAMS last year and hopes to compete again this year.
“The wide range of problems really pushes us to apply our classroom knowledge in real-world applications,” Downey said. “It’s important to be open-minded because you just never know what to expect.”