ABOVE: Fairmont High School Math League Coach David Miller talks to his students about a mathematical concept during their practice on Tuesday. In his first year, Miller has turned the program around from 113th to 45th in Class A and increasing participation from seven to 22.

FAIRMONT – This time last year, Fairmont’s Math League team was in 113th place in their class and only had seven students. Now, they have nearly two dozen students and have risen 68 spots to 45th in their class.

Math Teacher David Miller is in his first year at Fairmont High School. After getting settled in, Miller said he jumped at the opportunity to coach.

“I really wanted to go back to what I really loved in high school, which was math league,” he said.

Teacher Aaron Perkins was previously the coach, but he was coaching three different activities, so Miller offered to take on math league.

“It deals with four different tests,” he said. “The first three are individual, 15 minutes. The first one’s algebra. It’s five questions that get harder as you go along. Number four is like, really difficult. Not many people can solve it. Number five is like, only the top people can solve. B is usually geometry. C is usually number theory or probability and statistics. Then there’s the team test, which you work together as a team for 30 minutes.”

In their district, they go up against teams from Mankato East, Blue Earth, Lake Crystal and St. Peter. Currently, Fairmont is first in their section heading into the final competition on Monday. Regarding this one-year turnaround, Miller said it has been a team effort.

“A large amount of that is my co-workers being able to build the program,” he said. “We actually started advertising across the hallway to different classrooms and everyone to get more students involved. We grew the program a lot. As people got in, more people started to invite their friends. Things like that really turned into all the atmosphere.”

While math league may not immediately spark thoughts of a happening time, Miller said math has truly brought kids together to enjoy an after-school club atmosphere.

“A large amount of it is working together,” he said. “A lot of them are working together to problem solve. Some of them are asking each other, ‘How do I solve this? How’d you get that?’ Then the team event, usually they’re working and problem-solving together, and that brings them a lot closer.”

Senior Joshua Walder was one of the seven students from last year to return and see how much things have grown. He said it has been really great to see everything come together this season.

“I’ve been in math league for a really long time, since seventh grade,” Walder said. It was still a really small group. Now we have a lot of people, and it brought a lot of structure to us. It was pretty unstructured last year because there weren’t many people. The structure has really been one of the main things that’s drove us so far up there.”

Two Fairmont students are in the top five of their section individually. Senior Isaac Stone is in first place, atop dozens of competitors, and junior foreign exchange student Jonas Krist is in fifth. As for how he has been able to establish himself as one of the best, Krist said it is all about practice.

“Show up to practice mostly,” he said. “Try to solve the practice meets completely, if necessary.”

Looking forward to the meet on Monday, Krist, Walden and senior Elizabeth Hart all agreed that their goal is to win and secure a place in state. Miller said it would be a big accomplishment for Fairmont to do so, as the state tournament has not been in the cards for math league in quite some time.