By October, the football team lost a whopping 15 games in a row, including last year's losses, and, even though the town didn't care about football as much as it used to, there was still some lingering elements pushing Glen to act. Many of those elements intensified calls, emails and all that to the school's administration urging the principal to take action. I hoped that a string of losing seasons would make the population care less and less about football with each passing season, but I feel I'm on thin ice after such a long string of defeats. He then writes the pink slip for the football coach. Once he has finished doing so, he delivers the morning announcement:
"Good morning. First announcement: the mathletics team won its season opener, by the score of thirty-seven to ten against the Permian Panthers! And I know that it will be difficult to swallow for some of you, but the football head coach has been fired!" the principal announces on PA.
Taking the most senior assistant coach for a head coach would probably placate the fanbase for a while, the assistant principal doubling as an athletic director muses while the decision to do so must be made with all speed since the seventh game begins tonight at home. But then that assistant principal must get approval to fill the resulting assistant coach opening.
When that request opens up, Glen then realizes that only having 2 coaches total is not ideal for the VAs. And even he knew that, at a minimum, to maintain a bare amount of functionality, 3 coaches are necessary in the minds of so many: offensive and defensive coordinators as well as the head coach.
"Fine, this request for an assistant coach is approved, but that assistant principal is on the hook for everything happening to this assistant coach!" Glen shouts at his secretary while he responds to the assistant principal. "Even I know there are limits that can't be crossed. If it could safely be done, I'd axe the football team entirely but it's just not the case here"
Sure, there are those armchair coaches who just jumped at this opportunity, but the damage of underfunding this football team was already done. There might still be 53 players, but playing on the team imposed hardships on a lot of them, and thus couldn't make as much effort on the football field as they would have liked.
However, for the first time during Glen's tenure as a principal, mathletics must share the attention of the community with football. Yes, the VAs won their mathletic opener against Permian, but the VAs won their football game against Iota the day after. Quickly the town appears to divide between the football and the mathletics factions.
But just as quickly did football fall off when, despite improvements in coaching, the VAs lost again on the gridiron, so that by the end of the month, with their football season written off, the population rallies behind the mathletics team once more. Marcia proved to be a faster version of Éliane, while Krista seemed to perform almost identically to Gen, at least at the level of the questions asked in the preliminary rounds of the Math Madness.
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After the "regular season" ends, the playoff assignments are made on Monday morning and then Glen holds a meeting with all the teachers teaching at least one section of any of the non-AP math courses.
"The good news is: we made it onto the topmost division for the Math Madness playoffs. With the town's fervor for our math team, and the team's impresario, selling the team as doing what the population can't themselves, we have the opportunity to make mathletics benefit everyone at school" Glen prefaces the purpose of this meeting with the math department.
"While, of course, mathletics money should be used to benefit other extracurriculars here, such as quiz bowl and debate, and then theater and band, is that the opportunity you're referring to?" an Algebra II teacher asks him.
"No. I want the questions from every playoff round to be made available for extra credit in all of these courses for the week. It's a lot more than what our mathletes have during games" Glen makes himself clearer.
"You know what will happen; people who are more desperate will want to copy down from their peers. In that sense, it's going to be like any other assignment!" a Geometry teacher retorts.
"Especially in Algebra I, people will have a lot of holes in the material. I've seen last year's AMC-twelve and AIME questions, and regular season games look like these. Material-wise, these cover up to pre-calculus" a pre-calculus teacher refutes that point.
"Yes, extra credit based on items harder than the in-class material has its place, but unless they have friends that are more advanced than they are, they won't necessarily have the inclination to get the extra credit done by someone else" another teacher retorts.
"You may as well add the AMC-twelve to the list of assignments to give for extra credit; it's the same style and it poses the same level of challenge as would Math Madness questions" Trent adds to this discussion.
I'll have Valerie answer the questions from the Math Madness playoff games right after they end, but the problem being that I can't make her compete in the AMC12, so I'll need to set aside some time for Valerie to train on the AMC12 because I'll be given an electronic copy of the questions through Trent the following day, Glen muses upon the family implications of this tournament.
"This marks a departure from what the redesigned curriculum was supposed to achieve since Math Madness questions just don't motivate the same kids! It does not carry the same implications as financial literacy! In my experience, people using extra credit will typically fall in two camps: the marginal students who need a boost to remain in good academic standing and the perfectionists. Because there is a lot more of the former than the latter, I believe this is likely to work only if the amount of extra credit given is sufficiently high" the other Algebra II teacher comments on who could possibly want to use extra credit.
"In any case, we'll need to brace ourselves for a lot of after-school help requests if this plan goes through" Glen then concedes a shortcoming of this plan to offer extra credit based on playoff questions.
If the extra credit is too hard, the students may not want to even touch it in the first place, and get discouraged.
"I'm a little concerned. The superintendent allowed us to ratchet up the generosity of extra credit in AP Calculus BC last year because of the Square Root of the Answer, now the Vans Math Contest, covering harder material, namely multi-variable calculus!" another math teacher evokes possible abuses of giving too much extra credit. "Several students were able to secure As even without having to take the final! Is that something we want? We might risk students losing their studying skills, especially since some of them may enter professions where high-stakes testing is part of entry, or continuing education requirements!"
"We're going in circles here! Getting exposed to material now they will cover down the road will be useful to them, at least to the extent the material is covered later in the curriculum, so we implement the plan!" Glen voices his opinion on the matter. "Plus some kids have been complaining about the lack of extra credit"
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There will be, without a doubt, a handful of students who will do extra credit like drones. But in Glen's mind, it's an acceptable price to pay for giving out extra credit, especially when the extra credit is about mathletic competitions. Would the students complain about the extra credit being too hard? Would they be stressing now so that they can save themselves stress later? So many kids just want to pass the course and not necessarily to get to a certain target grade, Glen muses while the objections of the teachers are not the same from a teacher to another. But, if students wanted more opportunities for extra credit, extra credit must be earned.
The news are going to snowball when the afternoon announcement is given regarding the Math Madness playoffs.
"For the entire duration of the playoffs, all students in Algebra I and II, in geometry as well as in pre-calculus will be eligible for extra credit based on questions asked during playoff games. However, please be advised that the questions asked in the playoffs are on the level of the AMC-twelve, and, for the most part, are at least as difficult, if not more so, than the exam questions in the aforementioned courses" the school's principal announces before talking about the playoffs themselves. "The first game against Georgetown Prep will be held Friday night at six PM; please come to the pre-game pep rally held at the stadium, and also to watch the game livecast on the big screen!"
I guess we will need to wait and see. The population used to consider mathletics as being out of reach of the common folk, but if the extra credit makes the kids feel like they can handle the rigors of mathletics, or at least math... so be it. Not the best idea in the world, and nothing new under the sun, he muses after returning to the paperwork he had to do.
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After school, once again, the math team practice prior to the big game is held in the auditorium, and with not only the football team, but also the middle school's math team. For this reason, the principal is seated next to his daughter since Valerie is expected to play a major role in the MOEMS and AMC8 for Jennings Middle.
Much like the trio of Venomous Agenda girls during the Math Madness playoffs. When the practice begins:
"Warmup question: A circle with radius log (b^2) has a circumference log (a^4). What's the logarithm in base b of a?" Trent asks the people in the room.
"We have four pi log b equal to four log a" Randy, a cornerback, answers.
"Sir, we haven't covered the exponential and the logarithm!" Valerie complains, alongside other middle school students of which the most advanced are mostly learning algebra.
"Normally, it's in the second half of high school that we learn this" Vontae, a black male mathlete, adds.
And more specifically pre-calculus. I guess Valerie needs to double down on stuff in the domains of Algebra II, pre-calculus as well as number theory, probability or combinatorics over the summer and then she can think of playing for the VAs as a mathlete next year. I'm, not worried about geometry, Glen reflects on what his daughter needs to learn if he wants her to be a good mathlete. Yet because of where Valerie chose to be seated, he is actually just behind 2 of the 3 female stars of the math team. And the little sister of Curtis, a wide receiver, is seated opposite to Valerie, who is also one of Valerie's math teammates. I'm happy the student body gets behind mathletics the way it doesn't happen anywhere else, but it's their moment, let them enjoy it.
"The sum of all logarithms in base ten of the divisors of ten to the n is seven hundred and ninety-two. What's n?" Trent asks the attendees.
"To begin, the product of the divisors of a number a is equal to a to the number of divisors divided by two. Yet, the divisors of ten to the n can all be written as two to the x times five to the y, x and y each going from zero to n, then we have ten to the n plus one squared, and the answer is eleven" Krista blurts the whole solution.
Even I am still learning. Just not the same as these kids are, the principal comes to this realization while being there for his daughter. Both Valerie and Curtis' little sister, Daisy, ask a question about some other property they may have missed.
"Oh?" Curtis' little sister asks, who is on the middle school's mathletics team. "Is there anything I missed?"
"The logarithm of a product is equal to the sum of logarithms" Marcia explains, "but is also the exponent of a number that can be expressed under the form n to the x, here the x in the present case"
"We have a lot of catch-up to do to understand what our idols are doing" Valerie sighs, upon realizing the size of the gaps in her mathematical knowledge. "Right, Daisy?"
"But the question is: should we be learning this now? This is way more advanced than anything in geometry or what we learned last year in algebra" Daisy answers with another question.
"Only if we have spare time. We both want to be mathletes for the Venomous Agendas next year, do we not? But we mustn't neglect other subjects for mathletics" Valerie answers her teammate.
I wonder what it would be like if Curtis chose to play another sport over football. Football is the most dangerous sport the VAs play. My brother gets hit all the time, Daisy starts daydreaming about her brother's sporting experience and how it would have affected him in different areas.
What he does not realize is that gate revenues from mathletics, as well as sales of merchandise, should be considered one-time income, like the SRA's $57,500, which was spent on library repairs. Or ESSER money, too. But that's because he cannot assume that the mathletics team can sustain the same level of interest among the population in the long run.
What the booster club ends up doing with the mathletics money is to set money aside for the HSNCT and the NSDA Nationals, then buy a copy of every math textbook in use in the parish for use by the town's library. In the booster club's mind, the VAs should be able to attend national championships in quiz bowl or debate respectively should either one qualify; they feel like it's the year where they will actually amount to something. However, for debate, the booster club planned only for Florence's pair qualifying since Florence feels like the other two players won't medal at the state championship in their respective events.
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The population seemed to follow very closely the Math Madness and the team brings in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue by going all the way to the quarterfinals, losing by an irreducible fraction of a second over Whitman (MD) in late November. All good things have an end, if it was to happen here, so be it, Glen thinks while watching the game at the stadium with her daughter attempting to solve the problems at hand. By far the hardest was the last question. It was a question #15 at the AIME after all.
Upon returning home after the game, Glen then have a request for his daughter:
"Did you finish your homework in other courses?" Glen asks Valerie.
"Yes, I finished my homework before the game"
"Good; can you please solve the problems given during that game?"
"I guess..." Valerie sighs before she buckles down and starts working on the problems given during the game.
The following day, he receives a lot of phone calls from angry parents regarding the extra credit policy in place during the Math Madness playoffs, which was also in effect for the AMC12. Speaking of which, it exploded in popularity and the school was forced to book a second day for the B version. An angry parent even showed up before school to complain about the extra credit policy.
"Mr. Principal, I have some questions about extra credit: you made it so that people went around solving special math problems that are much harder than the exams for extra credit and for what purpose?" an angry parent of a student in Geometry asks the principal.
"We never learned the material to solve this!" the student complains about specific items from weekly problem sets.
"We gave the vast majority of students the opportunity to get a boost to their math grades and also enrich their learning by giving them an opportunity to do what their idols are doing. Other mathletics powerhouses won't do this, or even treat mathletes as rock stars" Glen explains to the two, in an attempt to allay their concerns.
"These were problems even our stars struggled to answer. What makes you think that just having more time than in tournaments would be enough to make it worthwhile to give out school-wide for extra credit?" the Geometry student asks.
It's obvious that using mathletics as a source of extra credit doesn't make everyone happy, even if the amount of it given is approximately the same as given in AP Calculus BC for the first half of the year, it was just massive, Glen comes to the grim truth behind the usage of mathletics for extra credit.