Trares
Madness took over our household this past week.
I’m a firm believer that the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament is the best sporting event of the year, particularly the first four days of games. From noon until after midnight, it’s nothing but basketball all day long. You have busted brackets and buzzer beaters and Cinderella stories. Nothing beats it.
Watching the tournament has been a tradition for my wife and me since we started dating, and it’s continued every year after (not including the canceled 2020 tourney.) We fill out our brackets the week leading up to those first Thursday games, then turn into unabashed couch potatoes for the rest of the weekend.
Since Anthony was born, we’ve included him in this annual tradition, though his interest has been more fleeting — a couple of seconds here, a basket or two there. His attention span just couldn’t stay put for a full basketball game
That all changed this year. Suddenly, he was fully invested in the sport: making signs for whatever team was playing in the final weeks of the regular season, watching conference tournaments with excitement and ensuring that Selection Sunday, when the bracket was revealed team-by-team, was appointment viewing.
Anthony also insisted on filling out his own bracket this year. We sat together on our kitchen island, and team by team, went through the games.
His initial strategy was seeing how the mascots would square off. There was a lot of debate between who would win between a Panther or a Bulldog, a Horned Frog or a Pirate, a Gael or a Hoosier?
Anthony also had his personal favorite teams. He picked the Buckeyes to roll to the Final Four, mostly because they’re my favorite team but also because we took a family trip to Columbus last year. As we always vacation in Michigan in the summer, he had the Wolverines moving on in the first round.
Eventually, he grew bored parsing out every game and just deferred to my opinion: “Who do you have winning?”
Big mistake.
Heading into the second weekend of the tournament, my bracket was already in tatters. Massive upsets took out my main winners, while underdogs I was rooting for didn’t have enough to get the victory.
But that hasn’t derailed Anthony’s enthusiasm. He still has a number of teams in his bracket, and will probably win our family’s little competition.
Better than that has been the time we’ve gotten to spend as a family reveling in March Madness’ magic. To see our child yell and scream at the TV, shout after a long three-pointer or thundering dunk, and hop around as the underdogs win has been great fun.
And Anthony will take a valuable lesson out of this March — listen to Dad when making your picks, and go the opposite direction.
