We recently brought Fantasy Sports Math League to math students at Ballou Senior High School in Washington, DC. The students were in Algebra 2 and Statistics, and we introduced them to practicing math with fantasy football for Draft Day!
Fantasy Football Drafting is the math hook
Using the FSML platform, each student built a fantasy football team on a fixed $1,000 budget. Every pick was a trade-off. Do you spend big on a star, spread your money evenly, or hunt for bargains? Students were adding, subtracting and comparing costs, and they didn’t treat it as a worksheet because they were competing to build the best team.
We’ve seen this in every pilot, and Ballou confirmed it. A drafting session gives students real practice with budgeting and decision-making, and they stay engaged because they care how their team turns out.
The fraction refresher
The scoring step surprised us. Even in Algebra 2 and Statistics, many students had forgotten how to add fractions, and calculating fantasy points requires exactly that. So we did some quick refreshers and then kept going.
This is a big reason we like game-based practice. The game showed students and teachers which skills had gone rusty, in a setting where the skill suddenly mattered because it affected their team’s score. Students went back to the math willingly, since they were working toward a number they wanted to see go up.
You don’t have to know football
Some students arrived knowing little about football or fantasy football, and they had just as much fun. Competing against classmates and working out the best way to use a budget was enough to pull them in.
The session also gave the students who play football at Ballou a chance to shine. They shared their knowledge with classmates, explaining positions, players and what makes a pick worthwhile. The students who knew the game taught it, and the students who didn’t asked questions and joined in. The room worked as a team.
What we took away
- Drafting works as a hook. It gets students excited and gives them real budgeting practice.
- Foundational skills still matter. Adding fractions came up in advanced courses, and a game is a low-pressure way to review them.
- Everyone has a way in. Football experts and total beginners can both compete and contribute.
Thank you to Ms. Jackson, the school librarian who organized the session with STEMPlay Labs as part of the Ed Games Expo and to the Ballou Senior High students and teachers for a fun and energetic session. If you’d like to bring a drafting session to your school, learn more at fantasysportsmathleague.com.
About the Authors
BA Laris is a 49ers fan (but also always add Long Beach Poly High School Alumni in her draft picks!) and creator of Fantasy Sports Math League at dfusion Inc. With a background in research design, pilot testing, and turning classroom curriculum into digital experiences, she is the head coach of the FSML game plan. She has spent years making sure that learning games actually work for students, and she’s always up for a good draft day.
Mia Barrett is the Director of Education at dfusion Inc. She’s an educator with a master’s in education who builds e-learning tools for math, STEM, and health classrooms. She keeps the whole team on schedule and makes sure each lesson fits real classrooms, so you could call her the team’s offensive coordinator, especially when her draft includes Eagles players!
Together, they bring FSML into schools to show that math can feel like game day.
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