Now that we are well into April and the craze surrounding March Madness has died down, we can finally talk about it. March Madness is the month-long tournament that college basketball teams compete in. Based on performance and division, each team is put in rankings and set to compete with a corresponding team. Teams with higher rankings play teams with lower rankings and the winner of each game advances to the next round. Because of the large fanbase that accompanies this tournament, traditions like predicting brackets have developed a big following. In these brackets, participants predict winners for each step of the tournament.
Mrs. Hunt, a beloved science teacher at Rosary, hosted a March Madness bracket competition for her students. The tradition also features a competition between Mr. Hunt’s Servite students! I interviewed Mrs. Hunt to find out more about this fascinating tradition.
Q: How long has this tradition been going on?
A: This is an annual competition that we started in 2016.
Q: What is the prize?
A: The Rosary student in my classes with the best individual finish; that student will receive lunch provided by me one day before the end of the school year! You are competing for pride and the Bracket Trophy to come back to Rosary! It’s been at Servite since 2018… we need it back!
Sophomore Gianna Rae Lopez (my sister) was this year’s bracket winner. She shares how she feels as the victor of this competition: “I feel really surprised and excited. I am also grateful that my dad helped me fill out this bracket.”
Tahlia Jain ‘26 explains the most challenging part about predicting the winning teams for your bracket: “The hardest part was trying to analyze all of the stats that the CBS bracket pool provided. I didn’t know what any of it meant, so I just picked the team I liked better.”
What a fun tradition Mr. and Mrs. Hunt have created for their students! This March Madness bracket tradition is a great example of how Rosary’s classes incorporate fun into everyday curriculum!
To keep the rest of the spring season as lively as March, I think it would be a great idea to extend the bracket craze into the upcoming months:
- Poetry Pandemonium (To celebrate National Poetry Month, famous poets are put head-to-head to find the best writer)
- Coachella Craze (Basically, it is a battle of the bands in the desert)
- Senioritis Smackdown (Maya Ginter ’24 is my pick for the winner)
