March Madness

It is March Madness time.  The time when the country focuses on brackets.  64 teams pitted against each other in a format where anything can happen.  Horizontal lines with the name of school written on it, connected by a small vertical line to another horizontal line with the name of a school.  Each school is given a number and that number determines the horizontal line your name is placed on.  All of these are connected to each other.  The number of lines gets smaller and smaller as we go out until there is only one name left.

Brackets were busting all over the land this weekend.  Projected winners were losing to schools no one had heard of.  The defending champions lost to a school that isn't considered a basketball school.  The overall number one seed lost to an 16 seed.  And we are talking about a school NO ONE knew.  UMBC Retrievers beat the University of Virginia Cavaliers. UMBC were more than underdogs.  They had lost a game this season by 44 points.  They won their conference and a bid to the Big Dance with a buzzer beater to a team they had lost to 23 times in a row.  But they went out to their first game of the tourney and beat the number one seed by 20 points.

Wow.

How many people when filling out their bracket gave UMBC a second look?  A 16 seed had never beaten a number one seed before, much less the OVERALL number one seed.  I am sure everyone wrote Virginia on that horizontal line.  Even the experts who probably didn't know anything about UMBC wrote them off.  When everyone around them was saying "No way!", this little basketball team was saying, "What is the way?  How can we beat these guys?  How can we prove everyone wrong?"  

When the chips seem down and you feel like the 16 seed, remember this:  there is always good to do. There is always a chance things will go right.  There is a chance that something exciting and wondrous can come from what may look like an overwhelming task.  There is a chance that your efforts could make you the next sweetheart of the education world.

There is no task too great for you.

Go for the win.

Bust that bracket.

Here is a little more on UMBC:  http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/22829177/ncaa-tournament-umbc-brief-unforgettable-moment-spotlight-comes-end