If you live at Trinity View, you are now a North Carolinian even if you haven’t been before. This residential identification requires that you accept the basketball disease.
There is no cure. March Madness begins today.
March Madness is the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual basketball championships. 64 to 68 teams are chosen from each of the best men’s and women’s teams in the country to compete over a period of three weeks for the national titles.
With UNC, Duke, and N.C. State victories, North Carolina prides itself in winning more championships, particularly for the men, than almost any other state.
We start training here early, and just this past month we had a taste of the younger set.
The Hendersonville High School boys, featuring two of our marketing director Sherri Redden’s sons, went to the finals of the NC high school championships.
I’ve always followed the games closely, particularly the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) that included those three teams above. It’s almost impossible to get tickets to the ACC season ending tournament which helps determine NCAA selection.
For many years it was always held in Greensboro. My brother Jim was a professional coliseum manager, and in 1986, after several stops along the way, he achieved what he considered the epitome of his career, Manager of the Greensboro Coliseum.
As the ACC tournament opened and he was being interviewed on the national television as the new manager, my brother Bob and I were outside the Coliseum with two fingers up saying “Need two.”
If you ever go to any of these season-ending events, or for that matter almost any North Carolina collegiate basketball game, you will hear that desperate cry, begging for tickets. We did pay the “scalpers” price to get a seat in the arena, but Jim did help us out in later years.
Appalachian State, UNC Greensboro, and UNC Chapel Hill will be representing North Carolina this year in the NCAA tournament. Also among the select, Tennessee, Virginia Commonwealth, and Wisconsin and others will have Trinity View alumni hoping for a successful national tournament.
Cheer for whoever you like but enjoy the Madness!
