Every year for two weeks, Woodbridge High hosts the March Madness Tournament, a three-versus-three basketball tournament, that takes place during lunch and is open to all interested students.
The name of the tournament comes from the annual national college basketball tournament by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
“March Madness is basically a college national tournament where all the colleges competitively play basketball…we want to bring some of that to Woodbridge and have a game where we can all be involved,” senior and the boys’ athletics commissioner Christian Yu said.
Huge crowds of students come to watch their friends compete on the basketball courts. The friendly competition allows students to have fun during their school day, providing a helpful break from the rigor of academics.
“What makes [the March Madness Tournament] so special is the people that play and the people that watch it consistently,” ASB president Luka Krezovic said.
During the tournament, students cheer on their favorite teams and are brought together by their common support for the players.
“It unites all of our students together,” Yu said.
“[The tournament] reaches people who wouldn’t usually play, but will because their friends are,” senior Sarah Giron said.
The two weeks of basketball are especially fun.
“People feel really passionate about their teams and they always are really competitive with each other, so it just makes the games really [exciting],” senior and girls’ athletics commissioner Sophia Goffard said.
This event is especially important because it can help students destress. The tournament is also co-ed, so it can be boys against girls.
“When we get closer to finals and [Advanced Placement (AP)] testing, people can get stressed, so [the tournament] involves everyone and makes people excited,” Giron said.

Many people take the tournament seriously and prepare for it, including dressing properly. “People wear their own uniforms [and] coaches wear suits,” Krezovic said.
This event also offers students opportunities to be involved without playing, such as being a coach or a referee.
Athletes already involved in school basketball teams are not allowed to compete to make it fair for everyone else. However, they have opportunities to be referees and coaches to teams.
“[Basketball players] can [have] more involvement, not just in coaching the teams, but also refereeing,” Yu said.
These components truly make this event inclusive to the majority of Woodbridge High students.
To make this event even more fun, awards are handed out at the end of the tournament. These include awards for the coaches, the player of the year and the best defensive player of the year.
In order to ensure their classmates enjoy the basketball tournament, students in charge have to work extra hard.
There are also many tricky parts to planning this weeklong event. “One thing that we need to keep a good eye on is when do we start the games because that lunch transition period is so hard, you could end up losing a good amount of time,” Krezovic said.
Many responsibilities are given to students, such as making and publicizing the application process. “We also have to make the rule book because we don’t have the rules for it,” Yu said.
This leads to many responsibilities falling on the sports’ commissioners.“We’re in charge of making the Google form and contacting the teams, collecting responses and making the brackets and the schedules and organizing [referees],” Goffard said.
ASB students are responsible for organizing the tournament, including renting the facilities, gathering the equipment and selecting the referees.
Social media has also helped bring attention to and increase participation in the tournament as well.
“Posting a lot on social media and daily updates of the games…has really worked through social media,” Goffard said. This allows more information about the tournament and other events to be readily available to a large part of the student population.
Many other high schools have also organized similar events. “It’s been a common culture around other high schools as well to have some kind of basketball tournament for students in March,” Krezovic said.
It is events like March Madness Tournaments that eventually create an inclusive high school culture and unite the diverse student population in cheering for, playing for, coaching for or refereeing for a friendly game of lunchtime basketball.