Every year in mid-March, McLean students scramble to fill out brackets, hopefully to perfection. The excitement surrounding the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men’s basketball tournament, better known as March Madness, spreads across the entire country.
The tournament features 68 teams competing in a 7-round, single elimination bracket for a national championship, and fans compete for perfect predictions. With every game being so high-stakes, even the top seeds can be eliminated in an instant, causing unpredictability and shocking upsets that define the tournament every year. Fans try to predict the unpredictable, and the excitement stems from the fact that the tournament is so different from regular season basketball.
“The biggest upset I’ve ever seen was when UMCB (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) beat UVA (University of Virginia) in 2018,” senior Ravi Reddy said. “It was crazy.”
For many people at McLean, filling out a March Madness bracket has become just as much tradition as watching the games themselves. Many students and teachers participate every year, joining small competitions within families or groups of friends.
“I fill out a March Madness bracket every year,” Reddy said. “Its really fun to see how you do compared to everyone.”
However, the tournament captures the attention of both students and teachers, and some departments have found creative ways to incorporate March Madness into the classroom. The Spanish teachers use a bracket-style competition called “Locura de Marzo” to introduce students to Spanish music.
“We start with 16 songs, and it’s a yearly way to incorporate music and different kinds of styles of music so that it’s a fun thing to do,” Spanish teacher Amanda Pituch said. “We style it like a March Madness bracket in the same way that a basketball bracket would work.”
Each year, the bracket changes to reflect what students are currently listening to. This year, popular artists like Bad Bunny are featured in the activity.
“I’ve been doing it for 6 years now, and sometimes I try to incorporate more modern artists,” Pituch said. “I’ve changed them sometimes to what I think our student population would like better or songs that are going viral.”
Whether through basketball predictions or music brackets, the spirit of March Madness often brings people together. Students compare brackets and celebrate their correct predictions, creating friendly competition throughout the school and the country.
As the tournament nears closer, many students already have their champions picked out, but there is no way to know how the next few weeks will go.
“I think Arizona is going to win because they have the best quality of wins,” Reddy said. “But March Madness games are so exciting because anything can happen.”
