March Madness

     Well, it's been a while since I posted something on my blog.  Steve tells me I did my last posts incorrectly.  I'll figure this blog thing out.
      I work in a school.  I'm not a teacher, I'm the athletic director's secretary.  I am so lucky to be the class co-advisor for the junior class.  Usually, the class advisors begin with a class and stay with them for all four years.  However, this class had someone else the first 2 years, but she was unable to continue this year.  So I applied and got the job.  Let me just say, I love this class.  It helps that my son Evan is in it so I know a lot of the kids.  We just finished March Madness which consists of class competitions in floor hockey, wacky races, tug of war, penny wars, dance, lip sync, Mariner Idol & quiz bowl.  They also have accumulated some March Madness points for other competitions from homecoming.
     As freshmen and sophomores, this class came in last place for March Madness.  They were determined that this year they were going to make a comeback.  They worked so hard on their float for homecoming.  The float theme was movies.  Our class picked Finding Nemo.  They made a fish tank.  They did the whole thing themselves with Diane, my co-advisor, and myself supervising.  The float was amazing!  So many people who came to the parade said the Junior float was the best.  We were confident we would win.  When they announced our float for 3rd place, our kids were devastated.  But they persevered and won some of the other fall competitions.
     As soon as the fall competitions were done, Liam, our class co-president and Maude, our class co-vice president set their sights on the dance competition.  The dance competition is huge.  They worked night and day on their dance.  They got together on weekends at the local rec center, stayed after school, some came after sports practice.  We were at the school until 10:00 the last 3 nights before the competition.  Was it too much?  They were consumed.  I'm sure some of their grades were suffering.  The other classes were working hard also and the rivalries were getting a bit fierce.  Was it going to be worth it, I had my doubts.  There had been crying, undone homework, fights within the class and fights with other classes.  Then when the big night finally came one of our dancers got hurt in the floor hockey competition and couldn't dance.  Another setback.
     I was so nervous when the time for our dance came.  They nailed it!  Everything was perfect.  When they finished, the whole class came out of the bleachers to celebrate.  There are 159 kids in this class, about 30 of them were in the dance.  The seniors were next and their dance was fabulous also.  Of course, I thought the juniors was better, but I wasn't one of the judges.  I also thought our float was the best.  At the end of the night all of the March Madness points up to, but not including,  the dance were tabulated.  We were in 2nd place after the seniors.  We were all happy, for the first time in their high school career, they weren't last!
     The next day, the final events took place.  Lip sync, Mariner Idol & quiz bowl.  The winner of the dance competition and the overall winner were announced.  The Juniors came in 2nd overall and we won the dance competition.  The kids were so happy.  Coming is 2nd was great, the seniors should win and after being last 2 years in a row 2nd was really good.  Winning the dance, that is something memories are made of.  Twenty years from now, will these kids remember what they got on their 3rd quarter report card in their junior year of high school?  I think not.  They will remember winning the dance competition and how good that felt, and so will I.  So was it all worth it?  I say yes.