Florida's Math Competition Champion

A story about how a retired Wall Street trader turned a Florida high school into a dominant force in math competitions.

"There's this guy Will Fraser who started as a banker on Wall Street doing bond trading in the eighties. He retires by 27 because he made enough money - probably at least $10 million. He buys a Ferrari, drives down to Florida dreaming of a slower, calmer life. He just wanted to play golf and basketball and hang out.

For a decade, he's that guy you see on Tuesday at 1pm just hanging out at the park. No income, just chilling. Along the way, feeling a bit aimless, he reaches out to a local high school to teach golf. He ends up becoming a math teacher instead.

On day one he tells the kids, 'Listen, I don't need this job. If you guys give me any shit, this will be my last day.' He discovers this math competition and enters his students. They get smoked - fifth out of sixth place. But it flips a switch in him - he missed the competition from Wall Street.

He completely transforms the program. While the average math teacher gets 72 hours of classroom time per semester, he puts all the best math kids in the same class, creates summer camps where they get 80 hours in 4 weeks, and builds a program where older students teach younger students. He even scouts other schools for talented kids and recruits them.

Now his school has won 15 out of the last 17 math competitions. The talent pipeline goes even further - companies like McKinsey and big banks recruit directly from his high school. When COVID hit and they said teach remotely, he resigned, rented out a church, and had 140 kids training daily while everyone else had to lower their intensity."