In this club, we run a math tournament for high schoolers in the fall (typically in November) and for middle schoolers in the spring (typically in April). In the semester leading up the tournament, we make the tests and prepare all the logistics for tournament day. For the tests, we write problems that take creative thinking to figure out, put them together into tests (five tests for the high school tournament, three for the middle school tournament), and then playtesting them over and over to see that the problems are fun to figure out, that there's a big range of difficulties and topics, and that the problems make sense. For the logistics, we book rooms, deal with printing and packing everything so things go where they need, design t-shirts, decide what we're gonna do in which rooms so the hallways don't all crowd, figure out the catering for the competitors who ordered lunch, come up with activities to keep the adult chaperones occupied while the competitors are taking tests (and activities for the competitors to do while we're finishing up scoring), answer questions from parents, and a whole lot more stuff. There's a lot of different things you can do; we can use all the help we can get! There's a whole lot of things that go into it! It is a big event (we had on the order of 1500 competitors at the middle school tournament last Spring), and the competitors are always really excited, and it's just really satisfying to see all the planning and problem-writing and playtesting come into reality and see it actually happening with real people taking the tests and all that. Anyone can join, we are Not Exclusive At All, we need all the help we can get.
