By Ben Pearl ’18
March Madness has become an American basketball tradition: sixty-eight basketball teams battling for 19 days to be crowned the national champion. This kind of tradition has become ingrained in Staples’ culture as well, but on a slightly smaller scale. On March 23, 2017 junior and senior recreational basketball teams will take their talents to the Staples High School fieldhouse to determine a league champion.
The season began three days before Christmas, but there has been no shortage of excitement every Thursday night since. “The competitiveness of rec basketball starts the day teams are drafted and ends the day [rec league] March Madness is over,” Alec O’Donnell ’18 said.
With the current tournament format, a team’s regular season record does not matter. Every team has a chance to win the coveted rec basketball champions t-shirt. The only factor that will come into play will be who can survive the field in this double-elimination bracket.
As players look ahead to the tournament, they remain hopeful at a chance to be this year’s champion. “We have potential,” Nick Perry ’18 said after a loss on Feb. 16. While his team remains under .500, there is always a chance because every team qualifies for the tournament.
O’Donnell’s team is higher on the rankings than Perry’s, yet O’Donnell thinks any team can pull of a Cinderella run. “No one can 100 percent say who the best team is and that’s what March Madness is for.”
What makes rec basketball unique are the people who play and how they approach the game. Every week, the games include deep threes, miraculous and-ones and explicit complaints to the referees. “It’s the desire that really fosters the competition at rec March Madness,” Evan Feder ’17 said.
There is no magic formula or special pre-game drink that will crown someone a champion. Unlike the NCAA tournament, a team only needs to play well for one day in order to win it all. Cinderella stories are just as likely as blowouts, but in the end, it doesn’t matter how you win.
“All that matters are rings,” Daniel Thompson ’18 said. But, along with all of the other rec athletes, if he wins, Thompson will have to settle for a t-shirt.
