Bonus Post: March Madness

Bryan came home from work a week and a half ago with paper brackets to fill out.  One for him, one for me, a master copy, and... one for Olivia.  Of course.  Then came the hard part:  How was Olivia going to make picks?

We started with mascots.  Bryan would pull two mascot pictures up on the computer, and Olivia would choose the one she liked best.  We made it all the way through the first round in the Midwest and one game in the West before she tired of this game.

Next attempt: We got fridge magnets and put initials in front of her to choose.  She did about two more games this way and then wanted all the letters.

So Bryan carried her over to the calendar and had her point at numbers.  If she pointed at it, that team won in the South.  Four points later (two of which were the same), she was done.  After an action filled first day full of predicted upsets, we put the bracket away.

Thursday morning, Bryan sent me a frantic text message:  "Olivia needs to finish her picks!  Find a way!  I believe."  Luckily, Olivia had just gotten out her crayons.  I wrote down her remaining choices, handed her a crayon, and whichever school she hit first won.  First round down.

As it was lunchtime, we moved the next choices to the table.  I wrote down the numbers 1-8 (corresponding to the number of teams left in each region) in varying order 4 times (one for each region) and covered them all with Cheerios.  I thought I'd just take the ones she ate first and call them the winners.  Unfortunately, she eats her Cheerios very methodically (I should have known), so after she picked the first four out of the last column, bottom to top, we moved on.  She finished her Cheerios first, though, still working her way from bottom to top in each column from right to left.

Since the Cheerio method was working so well, I arranged my numbers more randomly and let her continue picking up Cheerios.  Second round done.

Lest you be too amazed, Olivia did not draw the red circles.  Those were mine so that I could keep track of which team she hit first with her scribbles.

Rounds one and two.

For the third round, we found a calendar and I put Cheerios on different days and let her choose that way.  At this point, we reached the final four.  The choices had diminished enough (and were spread out enough) that I just put the Cheerios right on her bracket.  Her final four were Valpo, Gonzaga, Minnesota, and Montana.  Gonzaga and Montana advanced to the championship.

The Final Four

I already knew that Gonzaga was the bulldogs (from our mascot picking a few days before), but I didn't know Montana's mascot.  I texted Bryan, hoping to draw the two choices and let her pick.  Then he told me Montana was the grizzlies, and I can't draw a grizzly.  In fairness, I can't draw a bulldog, either, but I have a passable dog that I was going to use if I could also draw a bear, but I couldn't.  On to plan B: I needed to find pictures of a dog and a bear.  I managed to find an actual grizzly bear, but only assorted dogs.  It had to do.  I couldn't risk losing her interest again.

The Championship

It was a difficult decision, but the dogs won.  All of them.  The grizzly put up a good fight, probably because it's pretty cool looking, but Olivia finally decided on the doggie.  And the doggie.  And the doggie...

I let Bryan know that we'd finished, albeit a little after the games had started.  It's okay; Olivia and I aren't watching them.  :)  She was already in bad shape, though: Valpo (one of her final four) was apparently down 13 when Bryan got my message.

Olivia's final bracket (if you click on the picture, you might be able to see it better).  She also picked a score, in the event of a tie-breaker.  Gonzaga 80, Montana 46 (more calendar pokes, with some multiplication by me (I believe it ended up being 16x5 to 23x2)).