UCONN celebrates after winning the 2023 March Madness championship game. Courtesy | CNN

More than 70 students are competing in Campus Rec’s March Madness bracket challenge as the first round of the NCAA Division I tournament kicks off this afternoon.

Competitors will try to predict the winner of each March Madness game for the challenge, receiving one point for each correct pick in the first round, with points doubling each round up to 32 points for a correctly picked champion. The contestant with the most points at the end of the tournament will receive a $100 Walmart gift card.

Ryan Perkins, director of Campus Rec, said this is the second year the group has organized a bracket challenge.

“It is part of a bigger attempt to revitalize Campus Rec,” Perkins said. “We saw this bracket challenge as sort of a promo opportunity and to get people excited about sports.”

According to Perkins, the bracket challenge drew a similar number of participants last year.

Junior and Campus Rec member Libby Patrick said Campus Rec was inspired in part by the smaller bracket challenges that students hold during March Madness.

“Everybody does a bracket challenge,” Patrick said. “It’s fun to do it with the campus as a whole, and of course the prize is a good incentive to sign up.”

Freshman Caesar Gombojav said this is the first bracket challenge he has participated in. 

“I follow college basketball a bit,” Gombojav said. “I just signed up on a whim because it looked interesting.”

Sophomore Marc Ayers said that although he has participated in bracket challenges in the past, this is his first time participating in one at Hillsdale.

“This is the biggest group I have been in,” Ayers said. “It should be really interesting and fun.”

Ayers said that he does not have a particular methodology when picking teams.

“I don’t ever delve too deep into the numbers game,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll just pick teams based on color. One of my friends even picked teams based on how close they were to a Chick-fil-A location.”

Ayers said he picked the University of North Carolina to win the tournament but also hopes that James Madison University has a strong showing.

“I’d like to see them make a run,” he said. “It would be fun to see.”