By Anna Guido
Enquirer contributor

MONTGOMERY - He may not be as well known as Tubby Smith or Jim Tressel.

Dan Mirus, left, a math teacher at Sycamore Junior High School, along with several members of the math club: From left, Lizzy Wei, 13, Jason Kao, 13, and Sanjay Choudhury,14, show trophies won by present and former students at the school. (Gary Landers photo)

But Dan Mirus is a legend in his own right for winning just about every statewide middle school math competition possible over the past 12 years. The Sycamore Junior High School teacher and Math Club adviser has more trophies and plaques than room to display them.

"I've always liked math," Mirus said.

Math Club meets every Monday and Wednesday after school for about an hour, where about 40 members (more about 70 percent are boys) work on competition-level problems. Mirus stresses teamwork and encourages club members to help one another. Until they enter competition.

"Then I tell them to beat the daylights out of everyone," he said.

The Sycamore club beat eight junior high math teams recently to win the Lakota Math Competition. It marked the fourth straight year Sycamore has won the event.

In November, the club set an Ohio record for the most perfect scoresin the American Mathematics Competition, which featured 157,000 participants. Four of the six Ohio students who achieved perfect scores in that event were from Sycamore Junior High.

Later this year, Mirus hopes to coach his team to its seventh consecutive state championship in MathCounts, the premier contest for middle-school students. A loss in 1997 was the school's only setback in the past 10 years.

"We don't talk about 1997 - it was a really bad year," Mirus said.

"Like Scarlett O'Hara, when she said, 'I'll never go hungry again,' my kids said they'd never lose the team round again."

To date, club members have not.

Mirus is a Cincinnati native and Xavier University graduate. His degree is in elementary education, not math. Still, Mirus is admired by his colleagues for his success with Math Club.

"Teaching students math is one thing - teaching them how to excel in these competitions is another," said Sycamore Junior High math teacher Peter Tanaka.

Mirus has taught in the district for 28 years, the past 12 at Sycamore. He also taught two years in Cincinnati Public Schools.

Students say his good nature and sense of humor make them want to learn.

"It's very relaxed and fun," said Lizzy Wei, 13, an eighth-grader from Symmes Township.

Lizzy was a perfect score winner in American Mathematics Competition the last two years.

Jason Kao, 13, of Symmes Township said Mirus provides a "warm atmosphere and jokes around, but not to the point where it hurts our feelings."

Jason and his twin sister, Erica, are members of Math Club. The bottom line, said their mother, Jennifer, is that Mirus cares about students and "makes them want to do it more."

Dan Mirus' math tips

• Be strong on basic facts.

• Make frequent visits to www.mathcounts.org.

• Encourage your schools to participate in math competitions.

• Participate in a math club. If your school doesn't have one, get one started.

• Don't overly rely on a calculator.

• Learn the perfect squares to 1,000.

• Learn the prime numbers to 100 and why 39, 51, and 91 are not prime.

• Learn the Pythagorean triples (examples: 3, 4, 5 and 5, 12, 13).

• Solve number puzzles.

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