Naperville Central hosted a free, student-run math competition for elementary and middle schoolers on April 26. The event was led by Clover Math, an organization founded by four District 203 juniors.

The organization was co-founded by Central juniors Andrew Bukowski, Brian Dai and Arthur Xu and North junior Allison Shi in order to give younger students opportunities to engage in competition math. Xu and Shi also serve as co-presidents of Clover.

“There’s not a lot of opportunities to participate in these math competitions,” Xu said. “We wanted to inspire and motivate younger kids to do math.”

Around 150 students attended the competition, including many from Meadow Glens Elementary School, Kennedy Jr. High School and some students from Chicago and District 204.

“We would have been happy with 30 [students], and five times that amount came so we’re really happy with that,” Xu said. “Ambitiously, we might even spread to other areas [for future competitions]. Right now, it’s just the local Naperville area, [but] we had a couple of Chicago students as well.”

The competition included over $200 in prize money, and gave trophies to the top three finishers and teams in both the elementary and middle school divisions.

“It was surreal to see the crowd in the Little Theater because [we were] looking at the fruits of our efforts [and] our hard work, so many people [were] getting to enjoy the benefits,” Dai said.

Both Dai and Xu said their favorite part was seeing all the students at the awards ceremony.

“It was great to see [the kids] so happy when we announced the top five in [each] division,” Xu said. “Every time they came up [to receive their award], they were always very happy [and] very smiling.”

They plan to host another competition towards the beginning of next school year and turn it into an annual event for Naperville Central.