Fantasy baseball league teaches students math skills

A love for baseball led two Brooks Crossing teachers to create a fun way for students to supplement their classwork.

By: Melissa Hayes
    Colin Quigley has always loved baseball and often watches his favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, on television.
    And now, thanks to two teachers at Brooks Crossing School, Colin’s love of baseball is also teaching him math and reasoning skills.
    Colin, 10, and about 40 other students participate in a fantasy baseball league organized by fourth-grade teachers Glenn Ferraris and Chris Davis.
    The teachers, both of whom love the sport, decided to set up a program that students could voluntarily participate in as a supplement to class work.
    "It’s something fun but also educational," Mr. Davis said.
    Students were asked to pick partners, or co-owners, and the teams were split into two leagues, Navy and Hunter, named for school’s colors. Each team was given an imaginary $180 budget and a list of players. Mr. Ferraris created the list, choosing 10 players from each position (excluding pitcher) and assigning them monetary values ranging from $11 to $28. For example, Texas Rangers second baseman Alfonso Soriano goes for $28.
    The teams then chose an eight-player team covering each position. Total salaries could not exceed $180 and the students had to write a short paper explaining how they constructed their teams. Different teams could have the same players.
    "We tried to incorporate a little bit of everything," Mr. Ferraris said.
    Each Friday the teams see how their players fared. At lunch, they meet with the team they played that week to see who won and at the end of seven weeks the teams with the most wins in each league will head to the playoffs and work their way to the World Series.
    Although the students admit they are doing some math work, it’s not like learning from a textbook.
    "You don’t notice it as much because it’s baseball," Colin said.
    Eleven-year-olds John Mesiger and Ashwia Kommagesula have the first-place team in the Hunter League. They said their strategy involved looking at players’ statistics.
    "We picked people that we ýPage=003 Column=001 OK,0155.01þ
thought were good but underrated," John said.
    John said they didn’t go for big name players, they looked at runs batted in, batting average, at bats and home runs, among other things.
    Colin and his teammate Matt Pandowski, 11, have the first-place team in the Navy League. Their strategy wasn’t as "mathematical" as their opponents.
    "We’re both Red Sox fans, ýPage=003 Column=002 OK,0017.06þ
so we picked people that play on the Red Sox or former Red Sox," Colin said.
    This is the first year the teachers have presented the program, and they’ve already thought about trying other sports because of the baseball league’s popularity.
    "We were thinking about fantasy football, but it might be too hard," Mr. Ferraris said. "We’ll have to see what happens."