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After being a small Catholic university in New Jersey at the beginning of the month, Saint Peter’s University has become a household name across the country because of its run to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.
It’s the power of March Madness, a time every year – except 2020 – when the country becomes proclaimed college basketball experts to try to win a few bucks while spending a Thursday or Friday pretending to get things done at work.
Of course, college basketball isn’t the only thing mad about March. The weather teases us with signs of spring, only to revert back to the fading winter. Just two weeks ago, we had weather in the 60s before a Saturday morning snowfall. In the high school sports world, I’m out of gyms and back outside, though that means being at the mercy of mother nature and the rain that can strike at any time in western North Carolina.
Last year, I had my own version of March Madness. At the beginning of March 2021, I was still doing a few freelance gigs while applying for any sports reporter job that looked appealing. By the end of the month, I was putting the final plans on moving to Andrews and starting as the next sports writer at the Cherokee Scout.
In between was a bit of an adventure. Before accepting the job, I decided to visit Cherokee County to get a feel for the area. After successfully navigating the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport skytrain to get to the rent-a-car center – the Metro Atlanta airport is not that intimidating, just follow the signs! – I put in directions on Google Maps to what I thought was Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel in Murphy.
Not knowing there were multiple casinos in the region, my phone took me to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort instead. I then made the mostly nighttime hour plus trek to Murphy, not knowing that I was driving down the Smoky Mountain Expressway and curving through the Nantahala Gorge. Now that I know what those roads look like in the daytime, it was probably for the better.
The next day, after meeting and having lunch with Publisher David Brown, former staff writer Penny Ray took me out to dinner in Andrews that night. In an attempt to see some other local landmarks, he took through pitch-black road after pitch-black road, to no avail. The longer we drove around, the more nervous I got. It was something he laughed about a few months later.
The few weeks until I made the 600-plus mile trek to Andrews went by like a blur. Instead of being able to just sit back and enjoy the NCAA Tournament after a two-year break, I had to check off all the boxes that come with a move.
Find somewhere to live (thankfully, that was pretty easy). Make sure my car is running well. Dig up stuff from my college apartment to see what was still in decent shape. A trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where they had to cut off my mom from using so many coupons. And, of course, one last haircut.
The day of the national championship game, my dad and I made the long trip to a town I didn’t know existed just one month earlier. My “One Shining Moment” had finally arrived.
As I had lunch with him in Blue Ridge, Ga., the next day, I expressed some doubt I still had about whether I could make this work. It was my first real job, and there wasn’t any family close by. But as we parted ways – he for his trip to the airport, and me to my apartment – I gave myself a pep talk that I could do this.
I’m still here a year later, so I guess that pep talk worked, and I’ve learned that the madness doesn’t just apply to March. Even with schedules set at the beginning of each season, there’s never a normal week in sports. Games can get moved around, news can break or I’ll have to write a Sports Short telling people the N.C. Wildlife Commission wants you to stay away from bear dens and bat roosts.
I just have to take it one day at a time and know that, one away or another, there will be a sports section in the next edition. In sports as well as in life, the madness never stops. The challenge is learning how to embrace it when necessary.
Justin Fitzgerald is sports writer for the Cherokee Scout. Call him at 837-5122, Ext. 18, or email sports@cherokeescout.com.