One shining moment

Every year March Madness descends and college basketball hysteria hits an all-time high. Well, last night was the championship game and it was awesome. Every year since I can remember my family has a big party with lots of food and snacks, when I was a little kid one year my dad each made us a page where we had to guess random things like, "who is going to get the opening tip? first basket? first foul? first turnover? first to 50? who wins? what's the half/final score? etc. Anyway we would get a penny candy or mnm for each one we got right and the person who wins after it's all over gets a prize. We've done this for-ev-er and I love it!

Anyway, the best part of the night is that every single year after the championship game NCAA/CBS puts together a highlight film of the whole tournament set to the song "one shining moment". Maybe I love it so much because I'm a basketball fan, but I think even people who don't like sports would enjoy the clip -- and understand why college basketball fans like it so much. I'm almost in tears every year, and this year's was especially good.

My favorite parts of the song are when it talks about, "and through the years, no one knows, just how hard you worked, and now it shows" because I think of all 64 teams in the tourney and all 15 kids on each team. Just for them to make it to all those college teams each kid put in countless thousands of hours practicing ball to get good enough to be there. And then all those lower-ranked, smaller schools as well -- some of those kids just barely made it to college ball and they probably dreamed of being in the tourney their whole lives! My other favorite part is "and when it's done, win or lose, you always did your best, because inside you knew . . ." because of all those games played there is always one loser and you can see the heartbreak on all those boys' faces every time.