From the Desk of the Superintendent
Every year, the NCAA college basketball tournament is must-see TV for sports fans. But there’s also another audience who stays glued to March Madness updates: people who love to see underdogs accomplish the impossible.
March Madness is full of David-vs-Goliath matchups of small schools trying to beat teams who are bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, more experienced, and all around “better” on paper. And despite the overwhelming odds against them, each year a handful of lower-seeded teams shocks the nation by defeating their higher-ranked opponents. These underdogs are celebrated as “Cinderellas” for doing what everyone said they couldn’t.
The biggest Cinderella moment in NCAA tournament history happened in 2018, when the University of Virginia became the first #1 seed to ever lose to a #16 seed in the opening round. No other #16 had been able to accomplish this feat in 32 years — that’s 512 games between a #1 and a #16 with the #1 always winning — until tiny UMBC proved it was possible.
And not only was it possible, but then an amazing thing happened afterward: in 2023, Fairleigh Dickinson became the second #16 team to beat a #1 (Purdue). This means something which had never happened in the history of the tournament suddenly happened twice in a 6-year span.
That’s the funny thing about beating the odds: it only seems impossible until it happens, and then it never seems quite so impossible again.
As parents, we owe it to our kids to help them understand the odds they’re facing as they pursue their dreams. If they hope to win an award, get accepted to the college of their choice, or work in a field they love, we need to help them understand what they’ll need to achieve in order to make those outcomes happen. We also need to be honest with them about which skills they excel at, which areas they could improve in, and the amount and the talent of their competition. Obviously, we want them to pursue their dreams, but we also want them to do so with informed minds, impassioned hearts, and clear expectations.
But the one thing we never want them to believe is that their dreams are impossible, because seemingly impossible things happen every day, usually accomplished by people who refused to let the odds dictate who they would be, how they would perform, or what incredible things they would achieve.