Maths whizzes from all over Leinster had to reorganise their usually hectic Friday night social schedules to attend the Irish Mathematics Teachers Association’s annual Sixth Year maths competition at Rathdown School and Ms. Hopkins had the St. Conleth’s Maths team ready to rock (and Rolle’s theorem)!   We have a proud tradition of excellence in Maths at St. Conleth’s.  Just look at our recent results and departmental inspection report.  And we also take these competitions very seriously, as we witnessed once again Friday night, with the boys earning a very respectable joint 6th place (of 41 teams) finish.  The problem for our reporting staff is that the Maths team members are usually not as loquacious as… let’s say… the school’s debaters, who will continue explaining, correcting and pontificating long after we have run out of room in our notebook, put down our pen and silently walked away.  The Maths Team kids of the past tended to give monosyllabic responses, often in binary, or answer with emissions of short electronic sounds, sort of like R2D2 but not as polyphonic.  So it was a pleasant surprise to see this year’s line-up of Sean Pettitt, Oscar Byrne-Carty, Colin Duffy and Aonghus Hegarty.  Not only are they geniuses at the old adding and carrying over but they also are able and willing to enthusiastically and animatedly describe these numerical adventures…. with words!.  More C3PO than R2, indeed, and we look forward to hearing all about it!