2022 March Madness UNC Championship

Kate Miller
Apr 10, 2022
3 min read

Although I've touched on this subject before, there was no way I COULDN'T post about this past weekend's basketball march madness national championship.

Although I wish I could say I was a Tarheel born and bred, I actually grew up not having a strong affinity or connection to any sports team. My mom is from Virginia and went to the University of Virginia (UVA), but she's not a huge sports fan so I never owned any UVA apparel or watched UVA games as a child. My dad is from Iowa and went to Iowa State University for his undergrad, Mankato State University for his graduate degree and NC State for his doctorate. I remember my grandpa on my dad's side gave me an Iowa hawkeyes pullover for Christmas one year, but other than that I've never really cheered for any of the colleges my dad went to.

My brother loves to be ~controversial~ so when I started looking at colleges and decided I wanted to apply to UNC, he immediately became a Duke fan. This just fueled my love and passion for Carolina even more. Words cannot even begin to describe the satisfaction I felt after UNC beat Duke in the Final Four when I face-timed my brother to rub it in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UMD/comments/30low5/duck_fuke/

My house hosted a watch party for both the Final Four and Championship games (my roommate's birthday was the same day as the championship), but the Final Four party was a night I will NEVER forget. The game was a nail-biter per usual, but I loved every second of it; my eyes were literally glued to the projector. During halftime some of us decided to play a round of beer pong, but the 2nd half came on before we could finish, so I abandoned ship and re-glued my eyes to the game.

When the buzzer rang I felt chills race through my entire body, and then I followed the masses to rush Franklin Street. I got lost in the crowd, so I ended up fighting through the eye of the storm with my roommates' older brothers' best friend, Kyle. Our strategy was for me (a 5'1 girl) to guide us through the crowds while Kyle (a 6'3 man) held on to my sweatshirt to make sure I was safe and didn't get trampled on. At one point he took a picture of me from an aerial view, and this was the result:

After a lot of maneuvering, we found some people from our group and ended up at the Dead Mule Bar on Franklin. My roommate's older brother, Kit, found a "lucky" mechanical pencil, so that became our good luck charm of the night.

After the bar closed, we all went home and ordered way too many pizzas from Dominos and fell asleep with full and happy hearts and bellies.

As I mentioned before, Monday was my roommate Casey's birthday! I woke up early and surprised him with chick-fil-a breakfast and a fresh pot of coffee and picked up the Daily Tar Heel newspaper for that day.

Following breakfast and in anticipation of the game that night, Casey, Lex (another one of our roommates) and I went all over campus taking pictures together at significant and meaningful locations. Our idea was to put the pictures into a new calendar for our parents as a graduation gift (mom, if you're reading this pretend like it's a surprise when you get it!)

These were some of my favorite pictures :-)