Braach’s Standout Trig Star Performance Earns Second Place Finish in National Contest
The incoming senior at Flathead High is dedicated to doing his best — and in a national math contest, his efforts paid off
By Mariah Thomas
Last year, after a “dumb mistake” cost him a state championship in Montana’s Trig Star contest, 17-year-old Jacob Braach promised himself he wouldn’t repeat that error again.
The competition, sponsored by the National Society of Professional Surveyors, presents students with four math problems, which they have an hour to solve. According to Braach, who has competed with the program for three years, all the problems focus on trigonometry. Students put the Pythagorean Theorem and laws of sines and cosines into practice to solve them. Students’ tests are scored based on accuracy first, with speed acting as a tie-breaking factor. Competitions are administered first at the school level. School winners move forward to be compared against scores in each of the eight local chapters of the Montana Association of Registered Land Surveyors. The highest score among the state’s eight chapters wins the state contest, moving onto the national level.
This year, Braach, who’s headed into his senior year at Flathead High School, stayed true to his promise.
He won first place at his school; first place in his local Montana Association of Registered Land Surveyors chapter; and first place in the state, qualifying him for the national contest. Braach would go on to take second place nationally, joining the ranks of only a handful of Montanans who have won country-wide accolades in the decades during which the contest has operated in the state, according to Jamie Reed, who coordinated the Flathead’s competition for 26 years.
“I’ve always had fun doing math,” Braach said. “It’s been something fun for me, which I know is not what a lot of people would say. Math has always been a passion for me.”
Braach’s pathway to placing nationally at Trig Star included stepping stones along the way, beginning when he was a middle schooler participating in MATHCOUNTS, another national math competition program. For the competitive Braach, the format clicked. He knew he wanted to continue striving for math excellence through contests in high school. So, he joined Flathead High’s Math Club. It became part of a long list of extracurricular activities including band (he plays the French horn), speech and debate (where Braach also qualified for the national tournament this year) and Business Professionals of America.
“With everything I do, I always want to do it the best that I can do it,” Braach said. “I don’t do anything halfway, or I try my best not to.”
Braach’s dad, Joshua, backed up his son’s assessment. For Joshua and his wife, Scarlett, their rule for their sons was always that they wanted them to be involved in something. Whether in math, music or speech and debate, he described Jacob as a hard worker who always wants to rise to the top.
“My wife and I, our only rule for ourselves is we don’t necessarily need to know anything about the math or the music, we just show up,” Joshua said.
Joshua recalled Jacob bringing home MATHCOUNTS in middle school. Then, it was Trig Star when he was a freshman at Flathead High. Joshua tried to help Jacob solve the problems — but eventually, the problems became too advanced.
“It was a lot of words of encouragement,” Joshua said.
And for Jacob, it was a lot of studying.
He described a study regimen in the weeks leading up to the state, and then the national, Trig Star competitions that included at least an hour a day dedicated to preparing for the types of problems he’d encounter on the Trig Star tests on his own time. That came in addition to the weekly practice he got through Flathead High School’s Math Club.
His practice paid off when Jacob got the call (while boarding the plane to compete at speech and debate nationals, no less) that his perfect score on the national Trig Star test — which he completed in 35 minutes — earned him the second-place finish. He described himself as being “overjoyed and happy” with his success.
The win provided him with a $2,000 scholarship, and his math teacher with $750. That sum doesn’t include additional scholarship money Braach earned by winning at the local and state levels.
“The biggest thing that has kind of drove me to being able to do everything that I do is just knowing I am capable of doing it,” Jacob said. “That belief has been very useful, so I don’t give up and I keep going, and it’s really paid off.”
As the incoming senior preps for his next steps, he said he’s torn between two pathways. The first: he’s actively in the throes of preparing for music school auditions, where he hopes to have an opportunity to continue playing the French horn. His dad said he’d want to attend Juilliard or Carnegie-Mellon — both of which boast top music programs.
But Jacob said he could see a pathway for himself as a mathematician, too. And as he explores what the future holds for him, he’s got a lofty goal in sight for next year’s Trig Star contest during his last year of eligibility.
“I’m gunning for that first place,” Jacob said.