1988: A Girl, A Boy, and a Basketball Tournament

It was January of 1988. I was a freshman at UW-Madison, living with Amy, my best friend from high school, in room 110 of Conover House-Kronshage. It had been a difficult first semester. The boy I had dated since my sophomore year of high school ended our relationship while we were on winter break, and I could feel the rumblings of trouble at home. I arrived on campus ready for second semester. By that point, my tears had started to dry thanks to my friends in Green Bay and my new friends in Madison.

As the athletic coordinator for our dorm, I was assigned to represent our dorm at a UW sponsored dance. As I walked to the dance on the night of January 23rd, I ran into my RA who was talking to a boy she knew from high school. I, being newly single, noticed that he was pretty cute. I talked for a bit and then continued on.

The next day we had the Lakeshore Dorms Frostfest activities. The boys' dorm we were paired with didn't show up for the day long competiton, and the girls' dorm that Jones house was paired up with didn't show either. Result? Conover and Jones became a team. Lucky for me, the boy I was introduced to the night before lived in Jones and he was there. He had beautiful blue eyes.

January soon became February, and Amy and I became friends with some of the guys in Jones. I asked if their house would join our house on a coed volleyball team. They agreed. I convinced one of the guys in Jones to ask the guy with the beautiful blue eyes to join our team. He did, and pretty soon we were playing volleyball, followed by card games back in our door room. By this time though I had gone back to my high school boyfriend. And anyway, Blue Eyes had a girlfriend.

February became March and madness was upon us. It was time to fill in a NCAA bracket. My friend with the blue eyes picked Arizona to win it all, and being a former Kansan, I picked Kansas. Danny Manning all the way! We bantered back and forth about which team was better. He would leave nasty Jayhawk drawings on my door. I teased him mercilessly because Arizona lost to Oklahoma in the Final Four. As March Madness reached its height, our friendship grew and we saw quite a bit of each other. (I have proof. I still have my 1988 calendar which is coded with symbols that indicated everytime we saw one another. The symbol? A heart.) We both admitted that we were attracted to one another, but did not act upon it. We increased the amount of time that we spent with one another, which was rather easy considering Amy started dating one of his friends from high school.

Kansas won the whole thing that year. I'm pretty sure I rubbed it in a little bit. I'm kind of competitive that way. It would be twenty years before Kansas would cut down the net again. And the little piece of Kansan in me led me to repeat my prediction that they would be crowned national champions in 2008. But the best thing about this national championship win was that Blue Eyes and I are still great friends (OK, we're now more than great friends), and we watched the game with our three teenagers cheering with us. You gotta love March Madness!

And just in case you're curious...in 2008 Arizona didn't even make it past the first round. Blue eyes must have known they didn't have it in them...he chose WVU to beat them.

Afterword: After writing this, I searched for that 1988 calendar. According to my datebook, the day after the NCAA Championship game my grandma, grandpa, mom, and sister came down to visit me. I remember that we had plans to go to IHOP, and we asked David to join us. (Remember...we were just friends.) We didn't make it to IHOP as planned because David had played basketball earlier that day and injured himself. We ended up taking him to the UW Hospital where he found out he had broken his thumb and chipped his elbow. I remember my grandma telling me while we sat in the waiting room of the hospital that I should marry David because he had such thick hair and would never go bald. So far she is right! That's why you should always listen to your elders!