March Madness is the college-level championship tournament. 64 Division 1 teams are selected to participate and play until they are eliminated. The tournament is set up so were the best teams are the 1,2, and 3 seeds, and the not-as-dominant teams are around 14,15 and 16 in the rankings. During March, the Upper School has a tradition of creating a college boys and girls bracket challenge. The winner of the brackets receives rewards such as donuts, Chik-Fil-A, or various gift cards. This event is one of the most popular sporting events of all time.

The boys and girls brackets have 6 potential rounds consisting of the initial round of 64, followed by the round of 32, the sweet 16, the elite 8, the final 4 and the National Championship. These rounds eliminate half of the teams each round. If a team comes up short in one game, it can affect their whole season.

Darlington has a bracket challenge named Darch Madness for the boys’ college bracket and a Darch Madness account for the girls bracket. The current standings for both as of the day the Sweet Sixteen begins with sophomore Cora Fannin and freshman Brantly Wade in the lead, tied for 1st place. For the girls’ bracket, freshman Andrew Parsa and faculty member Brant Evans are currently tied in first place. With this being said, there is still a lot of basketball to be played, meaning that a lot of brackets can get destroyed or thrive.

For the boys’ bracket, the fan favorites to win March Madness now are the Duke Blue Devils, Auburn Tigers, Tennesee Volunteers, and Houston Rockets. However, quite a few underrated teams in the boys’ bracket can make a run into the Elite 8 and Final 4, such as the Michigan Wolverines and the 10-seed Arkansas Razorbacks.

For the girls bracket, the fan favorites to win March Madness are the South Carolina Gamecocks, UCLA Bruins, USC Trojans and the Texas Longhorns. Several underrated teams, such as the LSU Tigers and the Tennessee Volunteers, could potentially win March Madness for the girls.

In the girls’ and boys’ brackets, only four teams are remaining in each. For the boys, the teams remaining are Auburn, Houston, Duke and Florida. All these teams were the number 1 seeds of their side of the bracket going into the tournament. For the girls’ bracket, the remaining teams are Duke and UCLA, and the winner is USC vs UConn and Texas vs TCU.