Award winning mathmetician wins Distinguished Student Award

One of the amazing things about Sugar-Salem senior Ben Goff is that he largely taught himself to play the piano. It happened about six years ago after his mom grounded him from playing video games, because he spent too much time on them.

“And so because of that, I ended up picking up the piano instead so I’d have something to do, because I couldn’t play my games and it stuck — I found a certain love for it,” Goff said. “I think there’s a certain emotion that comes from piano and just music in general that isn’t accessible in other locations. You feel certain emotions without using any words at all and that’s so cool.”

Goff seems equally passionate about an extracurricular activity called the Academic Decathlon. Students spend hours studying everything from art to match to economics.

“And then we test on the weekends for fun — it’s the weirdest think ever, but I love it, because we spent all this time learning these cool things,” Goff said.

Goff got a 33 in the math portion of the ACT and took second place in the nation in the math portion of the decathlon.

“I love learning new things — being able to learn and understand exactly how things work and how the world clicks — that’s amazing to me,” Goff said.

Ben plans to get a degree in computer science and game development.