Cascade Math Fest 2026 recap
A recap of a day of contests, prizes, student-made fidgets, and the volunteers who made it possible.
At Cascade Math Fest 2026, we wanted every student to have a chance to take part, have fun, and find a real challenge—whether it was their first math contest or their tenth. Over the course of the day, we saw that happen in all kinds of ways.
More than 88% of the 140+ students—our capacity limit—left with prizes from activities, and more than 30% earned an award in the individual or team competitions.
But prizes and awards were only part of it. Students solved Sudokus, guessed circles on geometry diagrams, watched the live scoreboard, and cheered teams on during Countdown. We hope everyone left with another reason to love math.
Thank you to our sponsors
Hudson River Trading, Jane Street, and Art of Problem Solving helped make the festival possible. Their support made the day memorable for contestants and our team alike.
Thank you to our volunteers
An event like this takes a lot of people behind the scenes.
Volunteers ran contests and activities, checked students in, served lunch, graded, handed out prizes, staffed Team Countdown, and took care of everything in between.
To everyone who shared their time, energy, and enthusiasm: thank you. Thank you, too, to the participants, parents, and coaches who spent part of their weekend with us.
Together, we made a day all of us will remember.
A story about the fidget prizes
One of the day’s memorable sounds was the clicking of the activity prizes. Alongside the usual single-color fidgets, we handed out a few special fidgets with multicolored keys. The students quickly got creative.
Many contestants traded keys and made their own color combinations. Before long, one special design had turned into dozens of different fidgets.
The special fidgets didn’t stay rare, but we loved seeing what everyone made.
That creativity and ingenuity are a lot of what Cascade Math Fest is about: trying ideas, making something new, and having fun together.
Our plan for the special fidgets didn’t go quite as expected, but the students captured the spirit of the event perfectly.
See you at the next one
Thanks again to our sponsors, volunteers, families, coaches, and every student who joined us. We hope you had as much fun attending as we did organizing.
See you at the next Cascade Math event!