For years now, it seems like everything is the same in broad strokes for the town and its math team. Going into the Math Madness playoffs in the top bracket, making some headway but always collapse. And every year, VA fans always hope some fresh recruit is the solution to their perceived Math Madness woes. Like Salome this year, Faith last year, and Valerie the year before that. Yet they hope that the long-term turnover inherent to high school mathletics will suffice to get the VAs their slice of mathletic glory on the national stage provided talent is properly managed.
But the VAs' fanbase also knows that having multiple USAMO qualifiers is not a surefire recipe to go deep into the playoffs. After returning from the first round playoff game, which the VAs win handily, carried by Valerie, Faith and Nicole, Valerie is shaking in front of her father.
"I'm nervous: what if the race to the IMO ends because I bomb the AMC-twelve? If that happens, who will forgive me? What are my options then? Will you still pay for college then?" Valerie asks, worried about the possible implications of failing on the AMC12.
"You will have to live with family outside the parish because the parish won't forgive you! And I might still pay for college, but you will need to make it to the USAMO again at your new school! Then and only then will you learn that love is conditional! Keep in mind that the parish might forgive you if you narrowly miss the MOP or fail to make it past the TSTST next season, however. But if you don't even make it to the USAMO this season, you can kiss the IMO goodbye!" Glen shouts at his daughter regarding the AMC12 and AIME.
"Who else would I live with then? You're stressing me out! I really hope the schools in your relatives' areas, or mom's relatives' areas, aren't mathletic pressure cookers like this place!" Valerie cries.
"Now, go out and continue to study for the AMC-twelve!" Glen orders his daughter who feels like the pursuit of the IMO is worth the pressure he's putting on his daughter. That, even though it's now about the parish and not simply VA.
I ought to blow off some steam! What will happen to me if I don't make it past the AMC12? I MUST score as high as I can on it so it will make my life easier on the AIME and, from there, the USAMO! Then again, the TSTs are much harder than the AMC12! While I don't need to be perfect, each imperfection on the AMC12 WILL make my life harder in February! Valerie ruminates while she simply tries to solve an old AMC12.
Under the relentless stress, the following day, Valerie notices something is wrong for the first time upon waking up on Friday morning:
"Eeeek! I'm losing hair! What's going on here?" Valerie screams, upon seeing her blonde hair thinning out, and loses her cool about her hair issues.
"Valerie, what's happening?" an annoyed Selena asks her daughter from several rooms away.
"Our second-round playoff matchup has been released" Valerie attempts to feign knowledge of who the VAs would play next week.
When Selena arrives in Valerie's bedroom, she sees the scene as if she tore her hair because of the playoff matchup for next week.
"Why would you tear hair off over a playoff matchup?" Selena questions her daughter after seeing Valerie's hair on the bedding.
"If you thought high school came with its set of pressures, even if you were only as strong as Anna, it's a nightmare for me!" Valerie keeps crying, and Selena can tell it's because of stress.
"What do you mean? You seem to be implying that Anna is on a lower tier as a student compared to you! Yet I know Anna must not be underestimated intellectually!"
"When everyone in town counts on me every week, I feel like I'm holding the whole town on my head! The whole parish even! Daddy might have pushed me to extremes in the past three years or so, supposedly because training female mathletes to elite levels fit his vision for the school and now the parish! How do you think Salome, Faith or Nicole would feel?" Valerie asks her mother, still sobbing.
"You forgot about Chantal!"
"Chantal is a debater first and a mathlete second. She faces a lot of pressure, all right, but her pressure comes mostly from extemp!"
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Meanwhile, in Odessa (Texas), Permian advances to the second round, and its math team captain, Svitlana, an Ukrainian refugee who arrived in West Texas as a middle schooler, watches in horror as Permian's playoff matchup in the second round of the Math Madness is revealed to her.
"What the? Never in my life I would have imagined facing off against Venomous Agendas again!" a terrified Svitlana looks at the screen in horror.
"Svit, it's not immediately clear what you mean" her mother gets confused about her daughter's sudden horror scream.
"Remember in freshman year, where I traveled all the way to Louisiana to play in some math game in which I was benched! Now we're set to play Venomous Agendas; they appear to have way more depth than us and they will eat us alive! Plus, they have a crowd behind them, we don't!" Svitlana then starts to hyperventilate, as bad memories from freshman year resurface.
About how the coach at Permian was looking left and right for someone to join in on the math team, and how quickly she rose to stardom (to the extent mathletes can become stars in a place like Odessa, which is essentially nonexistent) when the AMC12 came.
"Honey, you're in the race to the IMO. Who, on Venomous Agendas' roster, are you most afraid of?"
"Honestly, there's more than one Venomous Agenda I need to be wary of, from the looks of it, they have several girls poised to do well at the USAMO. But the one that worries me most is Valerie. I edged her out by one measly point at the TSTST, but she's back for revenge!"
At MOP, Valerie discussed other mathletes at her home as I did, and never did she mention the Venomous Agendas. We were the only two non-Asian girls at MOP, Svitlana has more memories surface of Valerie, and of other VA mathletes Valerie mentioned to her without realizing until now how lucky the VAs were compared to Permian. At Permian, the Panthers can barely hope to have more than one girl at the AIME, or more than one mathlete even; on the other hand, the VAs have 5 girls poised to get to the AIME, of which 2-3 might be able to get to the USAMO.
"Even you can't do everything on your own on this team! What do you expect of your teammates going into the AMC-twelve?" Svitlana's mom asks her, but her daughter draws a blank, being unwilling to answer.
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On Saturday night, after finishing yet another set of problems from a past IMO, Valerie then notifies her father about a night outing about which he doesn't suspect anything. However, the next game against Permian, which is billed as "the opening leg of the race to the IMO", has tickets go up for sale. That, even though the real opening leg is actually the AMC12. Or alternatively, a "catfight of the titans" because Svitlana features heavily on the math team's social media as the opponent to watch out for.
"Dad, I will be at Salome's place to train for the Math Madness!"
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"By now you know that, by training for the Math Madness, you are also training for the AMC-twelve and the AIME simultaneously, so make sure that you keep quiet about how stressed out you are! You don't want to leave a bitter taste in Salome's mouth!" Glen sermons his daughter.
I really, really need to catch a break from doing math; my entire high school life up to this point seemed to revolve around mathletics and I am the go-to for asking for help in math and science whenever the teachers are busy with others. Much like Chantal in humanities and social studies, Valerie muses while she takes a route taking not to Salome's home but to the debate team's fundraiser. (Or to pretend Salome preferred to be on campus to train)
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And yet, somehow, she hopes that the debate team's fundraiser would help reduce the pressure she feels as the star mathlete at school. Gaston, one of the Venomous Agendas' Congressional players, was compelled to start organizing fundraisers in earnest. Especially since entering the Tournament of Champions, or ToC, held at the University of Kentucky, became all too real to the Venomous Agendas. He was compelled to do so because of what he perceived as significant uncertainty surrounding the performance of the mathletics team going into the Math Madness playoffs.
The first part of the fundraiser is about auctioning off the rights to ask debaters for academic help for the following week. Obviously, the novice public forum pair, which replaced the orat player, doesn't fetch the same sums as even "lesser" Congressional or Lincoln-Douglas players, let alone those players who can realistically earn ToC bids.
Yet, the second part of the fundraiser pits Gaston with Anna in a traditional Lincoln-Douglas round. She broke up with him over LD, why would she want to play her ex for charity? Valerie ruminates while she is exposed to more ideas outside of mathletics. This game also gives Valerie, alongside a few more people, a better idea of what she was missing on because of her relentless focus on mathletics. A more humanistic approach grounded in philosophy. An attempt to avoid being overly consumed by mathletics.
This game feels like a clash of playstyles, with Gaston running more pragmatic arguments, almost as if arguing the topic from a policy angle, and Anna going more into the principles and values.
Then the rest of the fundraiser proceeds more like a theater production than a debate tournament. Valerie keeps quiet, since Daisy asks the question that was popping in the minds of so many who knew Anna:
"Anna, what made you play LD here? Just a few months ago, you had a fight with Gaston over LD that made you not want to play on the debate team" Daisy asks Anna, while flashbacks from that fight surface in her mind.
"I made a wager with the band kids" Anna answers Daisy's question.
"Speaking of band kid, I lost my wager. I wagered the first chair that you wouldn't play a Lincoln-Douglas round before the end of the semester" the first chair violinist tells Anna, sighing in her red hair's direction.
"Now I am going to perform from the first chair"
Now I feel like I am the one-dimensional kid. I feel like, far from easing my pressures, going there leaves me with more questions than before, but on vastly different topics, Valerie ponders what to ask or tell Anna. She feels like both Anna and Chantal are better-rounded, both academically and intellectually than she is right now.
"Anna, because there is never any quiz bowl being played here, it's only now I realize what I'm missing on. I know, Anna, I'm not... dumb, it's just that I focused so much on math that I don't learn much about non-math subjects outside of what's covered in class. And I feel that's going to hurt me" Valerie then confides in her fellow band member.
"At the same time, you cannot know everything. Something's gotta give, and you must prioritize. However, you know how much confidence I have in your intelligence. I'm sure you can pick up the missing pieces you feel you need the summer after senior year" Anna then proceeds to tell her. "I will tell you a few starting points if you want"
But since Glen is in the bathroom when Valerie returns home, he doesn't question her before going to bed and hence he has no idea of what Valerie was actually doing. She then proceeds to practice for the AMC12 and AIME for real with Nicole, Salome and Faith on Sunday after mass.
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By then the AMC12 happens without any real trouble for the mathletes. In the locker room for that game against Permian on Thursday night...
"Venomous Agendas! The public calls today's game the opening leg of the race to the IMO because they expect this game to be a clash between me and the opposing captain! But we can still win because without Svitlana, another girl poised to qualify for the EGMO, just like me, Permian lacks depth!" Valerie harangues the players, while the game takes place at dusk. "May we get justice for the TSTST tonight!"
"TSTST?" a confused Cristiano asks her.
"The long name will confuse you, but the Team Selection Test Selection Test" Valerie then blushes of embarrassment. "Svitlana beat me there!"
"I would be lying if I said I wasn't stressed. I mean, if I knew ahead of time who on the opposing team would be in the race to the IMO... Our opponents would probably be nervous as well" Nicole answers while shaking on the bench.
"It's a game I'll probably cherish for my whole life, to know that I've been up against someone in the race for the IMO..." Salome then feels the tension in the room, alongside a dozen mathletes or so, of which 5 are girls.
The mathletes then take up their positions at the center of the football field, in a circle facing outward. Meanwhile, Glen takes up position in the home announcer's booth, alongside Trent, who mans the controls to the stadium's LED screen and hence display the problems for the crowd to see.
"Welcome to the second round of the Math Madness, pitting Venomous Agendas against, from Texas, Permian. This week's playoff game carries a special significance because the opposing captain is also in the race to the IMO! In the past, we might have played against teams whose rosters included USAMO participants, so let the game begin!" Glen announces to the crowd, without the spectators noticing that he's doing it.
And, because Lacassine, the other school in the parish in the Math Madness (albeit in Division IIC, often called division 4 by the parochial media, as opposed to Division I, in which VA plays) was eliminated earlier this week, VA is the only school remaining in not only the parish, but also the state, in this tournament.
Everyone expects the first point to be scored by either Svitlana or Valerie, except for those who drove all the way from Lacassine to attend the game. However, everyone is in for a big surprise when, yes, it's a VA girl who scores the first point, but...
"Salome Pasquier scores the first point! The Venomous Agendas are in the lead!" Glen then announces and the crowd then gasps, not believing that some freshman would score the first point in a playoff game over a mathlete in the race to the IMO.
However, a few seconds later, both these girls would score their first points. In the early stages of the game, it looks like the game is hotly contested, with both Venomous Agendas and Panthers scoring one point after another. Yet very few believed this game would remain that tight for long, since the readily scorable points are scored more rapidly than points on harder questions.
Yet, after the first question is dealt with, Valerie and Svitlana appear to be racing against each other, leaving everyone else to answer slower than they are. In particular, Salome took almost 5 minutes to answer a second question, making it so that even Chantal managed to answer 3 questions during that time.
"Come on, Venomous Agendas! You can do it!" fans loudly holler when a quarter of the time has elapsed.
But the atmosphere remains stiff, and Valerie makes a lot of effort to remain in the running. Justice for the TSTST! Her eyes are burning with determination.
And sometimes, when there are no problem statements on the scoreboard, the camera does show the faces of the various mathletes as they work through the problems. Glen seems to be a little elated...
"Here comes the blitz! Our Venomous Agendas are taking the lead" Glen shouts into the PA system, as the VAs score 4 points in 15 seconds.
Yet this year, it's more or less the same strength as last year, and also the VAs having 35 points by half-time. But then some Permian players collapse on a question, depending on who one is talking about, which leaves them stuck until the end of the game. The Panthers never seemed to get past the 35-point mark and so, they lost the game when Nicole scores her eighth and final point about 18 minutes into the game. As tempting as it might be to announce the VAs' win right now, I must abstain from doing so until the game actually ends, he muses upon realizing that the exciting parts of these games, at the Division I level, are front-loaded.
Not like the Lacassine game against some private school somewhere in the Midwest, which he watched while sending a request for new items that he wishes to have implemented in curricula parish-wide. For English courses, that includes making students write business correspondence, CVs, cover letters, essays for college applications. For math courses, bills, budgeting, taxation and loans/investments. Which he knew worked for VA, and he believes would be useful to everyone else since the lack of practicality of the material is a longstanding complaint dating from under the previous superintendent.
But since the rest of the parish might not necessarily have the same culture of mathletics as VA, making extra credit available based on mathletic contests entered by the school might not work.
"And the Venomous Agendas win the first leg of the race to the IMO against Permian, thirty-nine to thirty-five! See you next week and good luck to our own!"