The Power of Community

As everyone is I’m sure aware, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament started over spring break this year. My parents were lucky enough to get tickets to Notre Dame’s first two games in Chicago, so my entire family enjoyed the NCAA atmosphere. I, however, was in Punta Cana, which I’m definitely not complaining about. Although I didn’t get to experience what it was like to watch the two games in person with my family, I was able to watch both games with 75 other Notre Dame seniors in the Dominican Republic. I knew I would be “blogging” after the beginning of the NCAA tournament, so I was hoping to be able to write about Notre Dame’s success and great wins. Now, of course, due to the loss to Florida State, but more importantly due to the experience I had watching the game with my closest friends, I want to write about how sports can affect a community.
I’m not going to lie, just like I’m sure everyone else in this class, I was pretty disappointed when Notre Dame lost to Florida State. I had them going far in my bracket, as many other loyal Notre Dame fans. Even after the loss in the Big East Tournament, all I heard were things like, “its good that they lost, they have more time to prepare for the NCAA tournament.” When I watched the first game with my friends in Punta Cana, I was sitting in a hotel room, and even though we didn’t look as sharp as we had in the past, everyone was confident it was just first round jitters. My point is that everyone was so confident in the ability of the Notre Dame team because it seems that our community of students endlessly hopes for success. I will never forget my freshman year football season when we would cheer and go crazy for a touchdown because we didn’t experience many wins. So now that we had such a successful team, everyone refused to accept anything less than a deep tournament run.
This is where I want to talk about why I will never forget the Florida State game. It obviously isn’t because of the great win, but because of the game watch experience I had. There were 76 of us in Punta Cana together and on Sunday night, which was our last night, we all took over the “Overtime Sports Bar” and watched the game together. People from the resort kept coming in asking where we were all from and why we were all together. We had pulled out chairs and tables and gotten the game put up on the big pull down screen; each of us loyally watched the game from start to finish. We cheered loudly as if we were at the game, and everyone had a great time, not because we were winning (we were losing by a lot most of the time) but because there were so many of us centered around one hope. The hope that our team, made of mostly seniors, would pull out a win and somehow come back from the deficit. Not until two minutes left did people finally start to give up hope. Even in losing, though, everyone cheered. At the end of the game, I was definitely disappointed, but I realized how great it was that one game could bring 76 people, in a place as beautiful as the Dominican Republic, together to cheer and watch a hopeful Notre Dame win. For me, that game watching experience embodied why I love sports, especially why I love college sports and tournaments, like March Madness.

Mary Ellen Mazza, ND 2011
Social Foundations of Coaching

March Madness

As the March Madness “Big Dance” tournament is rounding the end, it looks as though the underdogs have taken over this season. Though, there were many big wins for teams that were expected to win, there were also a number of huge upsets. I was lucky enough to be able to watch some of these upsets live. I was at the United Center in Chicago, IL when a #11 seeded, Virginia Commonwealth team thoroughly upset the #3 seeded Purdue Boilermakers. The game was intense to watch because the VCU team was only lucky enough to get into the tournament by the extra places added to the tournament just this year in the play-in games. Purdue should have been in control the whole game, and had a quote on quote “easy win” when looking at the game on paper, but VCU was able to get the win out of the game and move on to the sweet 16 games. Not only was VCU a big upset, but as hard as it was for me to watch our Notre Dame basketball team play, they also were on the down side of a big upset as well. The FSU #10 seed really hit hard on our #2 seeded team just moments after VCU beat Purdue. Again, most people went into that game thinking that this would be an “easy win” just because of the rankings and how we had previously played. On paper everything seemed to work perfectly in our favor; even an elite 8 or at the very least a sweet 16 chance was heavily in our favor.
Watching these two games in person as well as watching many of the other upsets that have thus far happened in the tournament got me thinking about the difference between what a team should play like versus what they do play like. It’s hard to imagine on paper a #10 seed beating a #2 seed by over ten points, but when watching it, you clearly saw who the better team was on that specific day. Maybe we could have played better on a different day, and maybe nine games out of ten that we played against that same team we would win, but that one opportunity the team who played best (regardless of their seed on paper) advanced to the next round. I just think it’s incredibly interesting how no matter how hard or long we study the way in which a team plays, it is nearly impossible to pick the perfect winners for each and every round.
Amy Prestinario, ND 2012
Social Foundations of Coaching Blog