A sports mom’s March Madness insanity

I want to begin with a confession. While I was a sports mom, college basketball was entirely outside my realm. My oldest son played hockey, and my other son was registered for baseball and football, but his favorite positions were snack mom and after-practice ice cream coordinator. Now, let’s talk about March Madness and brackets.

In my previous life as a high school teacher, my curriculum required a March Madness bracket. I needed something to get the hormone-riddled students to come to class after Spring Break when everyone, including me, had checked out.

The first year was a disaster. Not everyone had access to a device, so ESPN’s app registration was impossible, and it was probably illegal since I never checked the school handbook. I went old-school with pen and paper, updating brackets manually. Teams were tracked on poster boards for each of my six classes. Managing it with students who had the attention span of fleas was a challenge. Everyone “won,” and each class had a pizza party with fiery snacks purchased from the gates of hell. I didn’t let that disaster deter me. After that, March Madness turned my classroom into a sophisticated war room.

Eventually, we switched to using electronic devices and apps to track progress. Most of it was fun, though there was always a group of girls too pretty to follow their brackets. One of them usually won. But who won didn’t matter; it was an excuse for a pizza party. Since my children attended the same school, there were no secrets about my classroom activities.

To appease my offspring, we ventured into the world of fantasy sports. My oldest son and I participated in fantasy hockey leagues. We stank. I don’t think we ever scored a single point. My husband and my middle son participated in fantasy football leagues. They fared better, and thus, a family tradition was born.

My children are all adults now. My oldest son’s girlfriend is a lovely woman from Minnesota who has beaten everyone in our family at every card, board, or backyard game. So, it made sense that she would crush us in our family fantasy leagues and March Madness brackets, and she has. Haley had no idea the level of competition our family operates.

For example, we played games at family parties to entertain the kids until the parents got involved. What started as musical chairs turned into wrestling matches as heaps of broken chairs were piled high at the curb on garbage day. The kids were then sidelined for safety. Slip-and-slide races ended in ER trips for broken ribs and concussions. One year, we tried baseball, and, true to our barbarian nature, it quickly turned into chaos. Bats became swords, balls became grenades, and bases were relocated, sometimes to the middle of the street. 

This brings us back to March Madness when we resume our annual tradition of trash-talking our Viking. This year, my daughter’s boyfriend has been welcomed into the chaos, and so far, we haven’t scared him off. Then again, we haven’t played musical chairs yet. But I have a feeling his Sicilian moxie might allow him to hold his own. 

Our trash-talking supply has been restocked. We all know our Minnesotan will win again, but that doesn’t change the fact that some of us still have hope. Yes, I cheated and used Steven A. Smith’s bracket this year. If the Viking beats that, we will build a shrine in her memory, and Steven may want to think about a career change.