Venomous Agenda Memoirs

Chapter 26: Give me a break!

I really hope both Faith and Valerie will make it past the TSTST in June, and that the legislature will understand just how big the gap is. However, I didn't feel like it was my job up to this point to watch the evolution of property values, but now I do, Glen wonders how, if anything, property values have changed across the parish with the educational changes made over the past few years. Especially in and around Jennings, since it's the community that saw the most educational changes post-pandemic. Going from a run-down school whose students mostly graduated with an education so poor it barely qualified as a work permit to a mathletic powerhouse on the national stage, and to a lesser extent in quiz bowl and debates...

Because property values will play into the parish's school budget for next year. He spends the whole game not as an announcer, but looking at the post-pandemic evolution of property values for major communities of the parish. Welsh, Lake Arthur, Lacassine, Elton. Yet he knows better than to expect people to want to move in any of these. His provisional budget for the following school year must be regarded as provisional until he receives an answer from the legislature regarding his parish's application for EEF and MSPGO funds.

The game itself is tightly fought, with both sides fighting tooth-and-nail. The Venomous Agendas play as if it is their last game for the season, and it may very well be. As are the opponents, especially the other seniors with Svitlana at the top of the team, without whom the Panthers would probably go back to what they were before Svitlana entered the equation.

By the end of the game, the following question seems to force everyone's hands into a sprint. Five men and nine women stand equally spaced around a circle in random order. The probability that every man is seated diametrically opposite to a woman is m/n, where m and n are relatively prime integers. Find m+n. A little too easy for a playoff question to the eyes of some VA fans, but for some reason, Chantal answers it first, by cycling through each of the 5 men, and, by entering her answer of 191, Chantal somehow appears in the VAs' top-5 for that game.

In the Math Madness, only the top-5 scores from a team are considered, so the VAs could bring both middle schoolers and high schoolers together for the spring and the middle schoolers wouldn't need to fear making mistakes since they wouldn't count towards the team score. Once the game ends:

"Venomous Agendas win, forty to thirty-nine! Mojo Mathletics is no more, and the Venomous Agendas advance to the semifinal!" the home announcer shouts.

The crowd is wowed upon learning of their own advancing to the final four. Glen then gets down to the locker room at the end of the game. He then approaches Chantal:

"Chantal, this was your best playoff game as a mathlete. Now, I wish you the best of luck at the Tournament of Champions in Lexington, given that this game made it financially feasible for not only you, but all five VAs on the debate team qualified for it to attend, as well as the middle school quiz bowl team to attend the MSNCT!" Glen makes his wishes known to Chantal, even though Chantal just isn't as good a mathlete as she is an extemper.

"To be honest, it's the second game, not this one, that made it feasible for us to attend the ToC and the MSNCT" Chantal then tells him about the financial realities of attending the ToC and the MSNCT (Middle School National Championship Tournament)

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Upon returning home with his daughter, Glen, once again, confronts the costs of the pressure he has been putting for so long.

"Honey, can you please keep training for the next three weeks? You may now include Salome and Nicole" Glen pleads with his daughter, almost like a beggar.

"For years now I have been pushed towards a nearly endless math training regimen! I think Faith is a safer bet for next season, and you made me subject her to the same treatment!" Valerie then lashes out at her dad.