Local middle school girls finish strong at Woodlands Academy Mathalon

LAKE FOREST, Ill. – A trio of students comprising Team 1 from St. Patrick School in Wadsworth took home the first-place trophy following Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart’s 13th annual Mathalon event on Oct. 25. In all, 39 girls (grades 6-8) from nine schools in Lake and Cook counties competed. They spent a Saturday morning putting their math skills to the test in creative, problem-solving ways at the all-girls college-prep day-and-boarding high school in Lake Forest.

Finishing in second place this year was Lake Bluff Middle School’s Team 2, followed by Team 1 from Lake Forest’s School of St. Mary in third place, Chicago’s Frances Xavier Warde in fourth and Quest Academy from Palatine rounding out the top five.

Other schools participating in this year’s Woodlands Academy Mathalon were St. Constance School from Chicago, St. Gilbert from Grayslake, East Lake Academy from Lake Forest and Barrington’s St. Anne.

Woodlands Academy created Mathalon to get girls interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses and, possibly, careers at an early age. According to Rocco Gargiulo, Woodlands Academy associate head of school for academics (and former math teacher), there were no rote paper-and-pencil drills in this competition.

“These events were hands-on cooperative activities that engaged students to use mathematics in creative, problem-solving ways,” Gargiulo said. “They involved mathematical computation, estimation, visual/spatial reasoning, logic and the use of technology. Thirteen teams of three middle school girls tackled a variety of fun and engaging mathematical tasks such as building, counting, drawing, estimating, folding and hypothesizing.”

Woodlands Academy is a Catholic, independent day-and-boarding high school for young women in grades nine through 12 that promotes academic, artistic and athletic excellence along with global awareness, social responsibility and strong faith. It once again is positioned as the best Catholic high school and the best all-girls high school on the North Shore in addition to its seventh-consecutive overall grade of A+ from Niche, an independent research company. Woodlands has also earned U. S. Department of Education recognition as a National Blue Ribbon School in 2020 and again in 2025. Most recently, the Lake Forest school was named an inaugural recipient of the newly established Illinois Governor’s Blue Ribbon Schools award.

According to the International Coalition of Girls' Schools, all-girls schools are producing a disproportionately large number of women in the sciences. Research they cite shows that girls' school graduates are six times more likely to consider majoring in math, science and technology and three times more likely to consider engineering than girls who attend coed schools.