Last September, my longtime friend Ian Young asked me to speak to one of his English classes at ‘Iolani — Literature of Sport. Even after years of speaking to classes of kids of all ages, I’m no poised public speaker, and well, I might have slipped up.

I don’t remember what prompted it, but during the Q&A session with me and the two colleagues I brought along, I offered up the following long-held-but-never-said-in-a-public-forum opinion: Golf is not really a sport.

The oohs from the class of about 15 told me all I needed to know: There was a golfer in the class. I’ve been a (recreational) golfer myself for more than 25 years, so this was not an attack on anyone, but I can certainly see why competitive golfers would take offense. (Imagine if they had heard that in the newsroom I once jokingly called golf “outdoor tiddly-winks.”)

Moments later I added bowling to my list of non-sports. Never mind that one of my daughter’s best friends is a bowler (for ‘Iolani, no less, with several of the students sitting before me her classmates).

Believe it or not, word of my controversial statements did not ripple across the entire campus, culminating in my being “canceled.” But it did get me thinking about what is and what isn’t a sport, and how that is evolving.

Baseball, basketball, football and soccer are among those that have been played professionally for decades and that seem to be universally accepted as sports. All require competitors to combine physical attributes such as strength, speed and precision with mental ones such as focus and the ability to handle pressure. They require practice and preparation.

We’ve also accepted as sports some pursuits that are more one-dimensional, such as track and weightlifting. Golf and bowling, I think, fit in there. They require precision, but not (necessarily) strength and (at all) speed.

What we’ve seen in the past 20 or so years is an ever-broadening definition of what qualifies as a sport. Esports might be gaining the quickest acceptance, with several schools fielding teams. It seems inevitable that it will someday have an official state championship here. But ESPN and other sports networks have long shown spelling bees, poker and billiards. Cornhole, drone flying and spikeball are more recent additions.

So why not … math?

I was a mathlete early on, competing starting in fifth grade, when Highlands Intermediate School in Pearl City hosted a Math Olympiad for its feeder elementary schools. Was this a developmental program? I did go on to compete for Highlands and then Pearl City High. (The Olympiad included a casino — probabilities! — for competitors to kill time at while waiting for their events to be called. Did this lead to my love for Las Vegas? Can I sue the DOE for my blackjack losses? Let’s save that for another column, and let’s put it on my Tumblr page and not in the newspaper.)

I never viewed math as a sport back then, but then the definition of sports was much more narrow. Is it time to re-examine that? In the interest of doing so, I spoke to coaches and mathletes, and attended two Oahu Mathematics League meets and one school’s practice this year.

Michael Park has coached the ‘Iolani math team since 1988. Wait, am I allowed to refer to ‘Iolani’s math team without using the terms “dynasty” and “powerhouse”? The Raiders have dominated the OML for almost Park’s entire tenure, this month celebrating their 30th straight championship. Though Park’s coaching record is the stuff of legends, Kaimuki Christian coach James Kwong calls Park “pretty special” for reasons beyond that. Park — who is known to welcome his students to class by playing showtunes on his piano — last year won the Ernell C. Young award, named after a former ‘Iolani and McKinley teacher. He donated the prize money to the OML so that no school would have to pay league dues for one year.

‘Iolani’s team is so deep year in and year out that it’s impossible to say one member is the key. Its top scorer this year was junior Justin Lu, who averaged a perfect 30 points per meet, but ‘Iolani had the top eight average scorers this year. Most of them will be back next year, including Lu and Keisuke Kwong, a sophomore who was the only competitor to average 30 points last year but this year dropped to a mere 29.6, good for second in the OML. The sophomore slump , apparently, is real.

Lu is also one of two ‘Iolani mathletes who are also traditional athletes. He competes on the varsity tennis team, and it’s not just a token activity added for his college resume. Lu finished fifth this year in the ILH, the state’s most competitive league in tennis, and qualified for the upcoming state tournament.

Asked if he sees parallels between math team and tennis, Lu, who also competes in Science Olympiad and plays viola in the orchestra, said, “Definitely, because there’s work that you have to put in in both. Tennis is a physical sport, but in math there’s definitely an aspect where you have to mentally prepare, put in the work.”

McKinley co-coach Valerie Dao sees it the same way.

“The importance of practice,” Dao said, is similar to sports. “If a kid doesn’t put in the time, it really shows on game day.”

Lu, who is considering majoring in math or biology but hasn’t thought yet about what career he will pursue, also pointed to the team camaraderie as similar to sports.

“You support your team, you do problems together, and you have coaches too,” he said. “I’ve made some of my best friends from math team. It’s something we share a real passion for. Everyone’s so supportive and collaborative.”

Indeed, watch the ‘Iolani math team on meet day or at practice and the joy they get from math and each other is evident. In practice, they run around excitedly comparing answers. Sitting in the cafeteria of whichever school is hosting that month’s meet before their events are called, you can tell they’re excited to compete.

That buzz is not unique to ‘Iolani, though. Most every team gathered in the Farrington cafeteria at this month’s meet had it. Maybe it’s fueled by the snacks they’re sharing, but it resembles the game day adrenaline you see in sports.

Amanda Feldmann, a senior who captains Kaimuki Christian’s math team and played volleyball for the school, sees another similarity between math and sports — the focus on long-term results and having the patience to know that if you put in the work, you will get where you are trying to go.

There’s a mentality of “it’s OK if you don’t get this subject right away, because math will take time just like sports will take time,” she said. “You’ll improve over time, so don’t worry about how you’re doing in the moment, because when you look back later you’ll see so much improvement that it won’t even matter.”

Unlike most mathletes, Feldmann joined up in middle school because she was struggling with the subject.

“I was getting a C- before I was even in algebra,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, maybe this can help me.’ Unfortunately, it didn’t actually help me (at first), but I enjoyed it enough to continue it and eventually I actually got better at the subject.”

Feldmann, who plans to major in English but is holding on to a longtime dream of pursuing medicine, improved to the point where she was able to complete precalculus before her junior year, though calculus had to wait until her senior year because in her junior year, the seniors voted to take statistics instead.

That’s one of the challenges smaller schools such as Kaimuki Christian — with a graduating class this year of six students — face: Where ‘Iolani, which will graduate about 280 kids this June, can offer multiple sections of calculus, across three levels, plus an AP Statistics course, Kaimuki Christian has to choose one or the other. On the other hand, the school has shown a willingness to adapt to meet its students’ needs. Feldmann is the only student taking calculus this year, so she is getting personal instruction.

Another challenge for small schools used to be getting 10 students to fill out a full team for each meet. About 15 years ago, Park said, the OML added a division for schools with fewer entrants, similar to what is used in cheerleading and club paddling. The Newton Division (named after mathematician and scientist Isaac Newton, obviously) includes schools fielding teams of up to six entrants, while the Leibniz Division (named, less obviously, after German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who revolutionized calculus) includes teams fielding up to the maximum.

A few years before that, the OML added JV competition for freshmen and sophomores, which helps more kids compete each meet.

“JV division is really good,” Park said.” You can just have more students. When you’re in ninth or 10th grade, it can be hard to get on your team.”

As in sports, Park said, getting those younger students in competition helps develop them. Unlike public schools, private schools have continuity between middle school and high school, so Park already knows he has an eighth grader taking Advanced Placement Calculus B/C this year who will join his team next year — because Park had him in one of his precalculus honors sections last year, when he was a seventh grader in a class filled mostly with juniors.

B/C is a class even most seniors at ‘Iolani don’t get to, so what next for that eighth grader?

‘Iolani offers multi-variable calculus (college level, but not an AP). After that, Park said, the teen will have options for independent study or classes online.

“We had one a few years ago who took classes at Stanford online,” Park recalled.

Roosevelt coach Jayson Kunihiro, whose team won the Most Improved award this year for finishing third in the Leibniz Division, also sees similarities between math and sports competitions. Preparation is key, similar to football coaches who run their teams through every situation that might come up in a game, such as stepping out of bounds before fielding a kickoff to draw a penalty on the kicking team.

“You’re preparing as much as you possibly can for the big day, and then when the big day comes, hopefully by that time you’ve done enough practice (where) you’ve kind of seen everything,” Kunihiro said. “So when the time comes you’re just going on autopilot as much as possible. There are always gonna be curveballs thrown your way, like we try to make sure we prepare for any type of question, within the time frame that’s given to us for preparation.”

Also like football, math league has coaching trees — no surprise given that many of the coaches competed when they were students: To name a few, Kunihiro competed for Pearl City, Kaimuki Christian coach James Kwong for Punahou and McKinley co-coach Shuko Matsubara for ‘Iolani, where she learned from Park.

James Kwong has coached volleyball at Kaimuki Christian since joining the school in 2012 when the high school opened. He previously coached at Hawaii Baptist and Kaimuki High. He sees the key to his role as a coach as the same for math and sports — building relationships.

“When you’re coaching teenagers,” Kwong said, “that’s what it’s all about. It crosses over. Whatever skill you’re trying to teach or train, whether it’s volleyball or basketball or how to do math, it’s really about relationships, and just to encourage them as they struggle. Anything they’re doing is not going to be easy, and how to get through it. Those are all life skills.”

Ultimately, that will matter more in these kids’ lives than whether people view math as a sport or not. The best part is what these kids are getting out of it — whether it be finding a school subject they love, finding schoolmates they have something in common with, improving their math skills or laying the foundation for careers in engineering, medicine or business.

Reach Sjarif Goldstein at sgoldstein@staradvertiser.com.