BY: Alecia Hicks
If you’re a big sports fan, then you know that March is a very important month. It is a month of nail-biting games as people categorize their brackets based on who they expect to make it to the end of the NCAA tournaments. For some people, March Madness is not just about their favorite college basketball teams winning or losing. For some, it means money won and maybe even money lost.
Each year, thousands of people around the U.S. get together and strategically plan out their brackets according to who they think will make it to the final two. People place high stakes on their brackets. Some jobs hold friendly competitions within the workplace that end with cash prizes. March Madness has become a time when people can come together to support their favorite teams.
Another cool aspect of March Madness is the amazing comebacks some teams can make during the tournament. Some teams may have struggled during the regular season, but the excitement of March Madness is that any team can have the opportunity to be a winner. For example, in the 2012 tournament, the BYU Cougars played the Iona Gaels in the first four round. During the last six minutes of the first half, BYU was able to come back from a 25 point lead that Iona held. The game ended with a nail-biting final score of 78-72 in favor of BYU. Games like these are what make March Madness so exciting! Even when we think our favorite team is about to be out of the tournament in single-elimination, the team fights for their position in the tournament and pushes a little harder.
Although March Madness is just a sports tournament, there is also a lesson to be learned from the game. Sometimes in life, we think that we are too far behind. Oftentimes we can get stuck in life and it can be easy to lose hope. But life is full of choices. We can choose to give in to the pressures and hardships of life and allow them to dictate our success, or we can choose to go against the grain and make an unbelievable comeback that shocks the world.