When I think of the month of March, three things immediately pop into my head: Shamrock Shakes, spring break and March Madness.
I hate to disappoint, but I won’t be talking about how wonderful those green shakes from McDonald’s are, or how much fun I’ll be having in Florida. I want to focus instead on the greatest sporting event ever, March Madness.
Just hearing those two words gives me goose bumps. Sixty eight of the best teams in NCAA college basketball go head-to-head in a three week long tournament to attempt to earn the title of national champion.
It seems simple yet it is anything but. The main reason why March Madness is great is the upsets that happen every year that no one sees coming like a school of 6,000 beating a school of 50,000 on the biggest stage.
An upset of this caliber occurred in last year’s tournament. In the first round, Duke University played Lehigh University in what would go down as one of the biggest upsets in history. If these two teams played 100 times, I would bet Duke would win 99 of them, but when it mattered most, Lehigh somehow found a way to shock the world.
In March, most people  find themselves cheering for the underdogs. Last year, most people wanted to see the small school  of Lehigh pull the upset. At Park, we too often find ourselves labeled as the underdogs.
Quite simply, Park is not an athletic powerhouse. I’m not saying we are always bad at sports, just look at the success of our soccer, basketball and synchro teams. But in comparison to schools like Wayzata and Eden Prairie, we normally fall short.
All of that can change during the playoffs. Just like the underdogs in March Madness, Park athletes simply have a different attitude going into the postseason. We have the mindset that no matter how bad the regular season went, we can completely turn around the season if we just win in the playoffs.
This was the attitude surrounding the football team going into our playoff game against Bloomington-Kennedy.
We were considered the favorite in the game because we were the higher seed, however it didn’t feel that way. The season wasn’t going in the direction it was supposed to with only one tally in the win column.
But, we all knew that anything could happen in the postseason. With that in mind, we put the regular season behind us and won the game 42-29.
So as you watch the mayhem of March unfold and small schools pull the upsets of the tournament, remember anything can happen and underdogs, like Park, will have their one shining moment.

What’s the point?

-Don’t be discouraged if you are an underdog
-Most people cheer for the underdogs
-Nothing beats March Madness