Author Spotlight
Luke Beil
March Madness. The month of chaotic watch parties, big upsets and even bigger bets — all revolving around one’s luck and strategies. In other words, it’s bracket season.
Senior Luke Audus, the current organizer of a bracket of 38 seniors, knows it better than anyone.
Audus started watching college basketball at around 10 years old, surrounded by the March Madness from his dad, an avid University of Kansas basketball fan. Once Audus started watching the tournaments, he got involved in March Madness brackets, and started making small family bracket challenges each year.
“There is just a lot of heart in it, it’s huge and chaotic and I just enjoy watching the games and my bracket,” Audus said.
After seasons of bracket challenges with close friends and family, Audus decided to bump it up a level by creating a larger and more official bracket with a group open to anyone in his senior class.
“There is more at stake and more competition with a bigger bracket, so I just asked if any of the seniors wanted to do it and have a good time with it,” Audus said.
Luke’s bracket group includes a mix of seniors who watch college basketball and some who don’t. In order to recruit members, Audus sent the link to join his bracket in the senior GroupMe as well as the assassins GroupMe. All seniors have to do is pay $5 to buy in — the pot currently stands at $115. Audus’s ultimate goal is to bring the senior class together despite varying levels of commitment to basketball.
“I’m just here to get as many people to have a good time with it,” Audus said.
For Audus, filling out his bracket is a combination of knowledge and favoritism. While he fills out his brackets using his prior information he knows about the teams, he still favors Kansas — being a lifetime fan. He’s been picking them to win since he was 10, it’s a nonnegotiable.
Although Audus takes filling out his bracket seriously, he also fully encourages other seniors to use fun ways of making a bracket, such as favorite mascots or team colors. He believes that keeping brackets lighthearted is the most valuable mindset in March Madness, far more important than having the winning lineup.
“I help my sisters who are five years old fill out their brackets,” Audus said. “I’ll ask questions like, ‘Blue or red?’ or ‘Blue hens versus wildcats?’ which they get pretty excited about.”
Senior Sam Huntley joined Audus’s bracket because he thought it’d be a good way to have friendly competition with people he wouldn’t usually have a bracket challenge with.
“I watch a lot of March Madness, but I’m getting beat by people who probably haven’t watched a single college basketball game,” Huntley said
Huntley hopes that other senior classes in the future do a bracket challenge similar to what Audus has done. He thinks it brought a good group of seniors together because a wide variety of students joined in on the fun.
Senior Maeve McGrath is also competing in Audus’s bracket and has been a big college basketball fan her whole life. McGrath’s favorite part of the bracket challenge is trash talking her fellow seniors.
“It’s just fun to see how other people’s brackets are doing and have bragging rights when you pick up on an upset,” Mcgrath said.
McGrath agrees that this bracket challenge becomes a tradition for seniors at East in the future.
“I’m all about doing things as a school and a grade and a community, so this is just another activity that’s fun and brings people together,” McGrath said. “And it will be even more fun when I win it.”
When Audus started this bracket challenge, he had no intent of it becoming something that the senior class would do each year. However, he’s by no means against having this friendly competition be carried for future classes.
“It’d be really cool if the seniors got together and did this year after year, or maybe even the whole school could do a bracket pool,” Audus said”. But that’s up to whoever would want to carry this on.”
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