For many at Communications High School (CHS), the phrase March Madness calls to mind enthusiastic teams, ingenuitive ideas, and intense competition to advance through a bracket.
“March Madness? We won one time,” recalled junior Helena Szep of Middletown.
Szep was of course referencing the Digital Video (DV) Club’s March Madness tournament, an event popular among students where teams compete to create the best homemade films.
Table Tennis Club hosts a similar tournament, where participants compete in a series of rounds in order to determine an ultimate winner. Club members, such as senior Isabella Remolina of Shrewsbury, can also construct their own brackets to illustrate their predicted outcomes of the games.
“I filled out my table tennis bracket and it forced me to pay some attention to what was going on in the club, which is pretty smart because normally I’m very far removed from it,” said Remolina.
But for others, often those who attend high schools with real sports teams, March is a month of competitive brackets for college basketball.
March Madness is a single-elimination style tournament for Division I college basketball organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It begins with Selection Sunday, which will occur this year on Mar. 16, in which the NCAA selection committee reveals the 68 teams that have qualified for the competition. The 68 are then narrowed down to 64 through The First Four, a series of games where the lowest-ranked teams compete to secure their spot in the tournament.
From there, the teams are separated into four regions and ranked respectively, playing through a bracket where losing teams are eliminated until the winners of each region are determined. These winners qualify for the semifinals or Final Four. One can conclude what happens next, as four goes to two and a winner is crowned and everyone cheers (unless you were rooting for the losing team).
Fans of college basketball like junior Joseph Calabrese involve themselves in the game by creating their own brackets to predict who will win the championship.
“Creating brackets is always an intense and exciting way to compete with friends,” said Calabrese. “But it can also be upsetting when you get everything wrong.”
While Calabrese’s experience can definitely be described as Madness, the nickname wasn’t associated with the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament until 1982, over 40 years after its creation in 1939.
Since then, the men’s tournament has garnered popularity, but the women’s game has only recently stepped into the spotlight. Last year, stars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers brought a spike in viewership to women’s college basketball. The championship game between the South Carolina Gamecocks and Iowa Hawkeyes drew a record-breaking 18.9 million viewers.
Remolina noted that women’s college basketball has seen a major uptick not only in viewership but also in overall knowledge and popularity.
“I can’t name any men’s college basketball players from last year but I know names like Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese,” said Remolina. “College basketball, simply put, has been a really great thing for women’s sports in general.”
Whether it be for nationally televised sporting events or DV club student films, the incorporation of March Madness-style competition and brackets creates an environment that encourages participation.
“I like CHS bracket culture. It’s a fun way to involve everyone just a little,” said Remolina.
