What a month! To be honest, the term March Madness doesn’t come close to describing all that happened. The great American tradition of covering college sports is continued this month, with both the College Hockey and Basketball playoffs on T.V. and in the paper constantly.
I’ve noticed that there is more interaction with sports here than at ho
me; people don’t just watch games, they analyse them in the hope that their bracket will come up trumps for gloating rights with their friends, especially when their college is involved. Brackets are pretty much like the posters you get before the World Cup, with all the teams in the competition written on it and the route they must take to get to the final. But instead of filling in the results as they happen, you try to predict who will get through all the way to the Final Four and ultimately predict the winner. I turned on ESPN to see Barrack Obama showing the county his bracket for both the men’s and women’s basketball playoffs. I’m not sure if people do brackets for hockey, but basketball brackets are a big deal here. Just sitting on the bus, you hear people talking about the strengths of their bracket for one reason or the other, usually naming people that I have never heard of but would get to know over the course of March, especially UConn’s Kemba Walker, who is the superstar of college basketball this year. He’s putting himself up for the NBA draft, looking for a professional team to take him on… and he’s the same age as me.
Seeing as BC’s basketball team didn’t make it to the playoffs, all the focus was on our hockey team. In fact, the hockey team
here means so much to BC that a home basketball game that was changed to an away game because of a hockey practice. I guess BC aren’t trying to work on their basketball credibility.
Our hockey team went into the playoffs on a high after winning the Beanpot (annual competition between BC, BU, Harvard and Northeastern) and as reigning national champions. It’s fair to say that we were feeling pretty good about seeing another national title coming our way. Coming up to our game we had won our eight previous games, and our game started well, and we went one up after 19 seconds. After that, well, we don’t really want to talk about what happened after that. There was one saving grace that would come at the start of April and that was that at least Notre Dame didn’t win. I don’t know who beat them, or who ultimately won, but I know Notre Dame didn’t, and isn’t that all that really matters when it boils down to it?
I think the BC bookstore is a good place to look to understand what’s going on at that particular time of the year; during football season, the football jerseys and BC Football appare
l was at the front of the shop, when we came back in second semester, that gear had been replaced by a multitude of basketball and hockey clothing, and coming up to March a new stand appeared. It was easily the most noticeable thing in the whole shop, a place where everything is maroon, gold or black. It stood defiantly, in all of its bright green glory, displaying hoodys and shirts with “BOSTON COLLEGE” screaming across the chest, just above a large, white shamrock. Yes, this a the reminder that St. Patrick’s Day was fast approaching and with that, the idea that being Irish isn’t measured by where you are from, but by how much green you can wear and how loudly you can protest that you love Guinness.
Many of the student organisations around campus were doing Irish-themed events, covering the walls of every campus building to ad
vertise them and I have no problem with this. However, there was the slight problem of shortening the name Patrick by many an American. “But Conor” you cry. “We do that over here. Sure doesn’t everyone call it St. Paddy’s day?” Why yes, impatient and slightly annoying blog reader, we do. However, the problem isn’t with shortening it to Paddy, but to Patty. I kid you not when I say this, every single poster had invitations to come spend St. Patty’s day with them. One of my friends asked me what I was doing for “Patty’s” day, so I obviously had to correct him. He then
proceeded to shout something about ‘MERICA and how I’m only an Irish Mick anyway, showing that the only thing Americans love more than the Irish is double standards.
Seeing as Paddy’s day fell on a Thursday this year, it meant that the parade was on the following S
unday, which was strange enough in itself, but the fact that I wasn’t at the parade in Carrick was even stranger. We got together a group of internationals to head down to the parade in Southie. (South Boston) For many of them it was their first Paddy’s Day parade ever! They had no idea what to expect, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I knew what to expect from it either, surely not every parade outside of Dublin has tractors pulling musicians, scouts marching and men dressed up like llama-type things. Well, once we arrived into Southie (after teaching Ireland’s Call to everyone who would listen to us on the T) what did we see marching by but the Brookline B
oy Scouts, Troop 6. Just when I was beginning to feel right at home, a tractor pulling along a band called “The Gobshites” drove by playing trad music, sitting on bales of hay. At this stage I was about to ask if anyone was going to the Fiddlers later, but I managed to hold myself back. Not because I was in Boston, but because I knew that the Fiddlers would be 15 quid in and wasn’t Charlie’s free?
The whole day ended up feeling a lot like a normal Paddy’s Day, so it was fun to have it with all the internationals, and that feeling of being treated like royalty when people found out that I was Irish, was even more pronounced than usual. More good times.
It's finally starting to get warmer here, that said, a few days after I took this photo, I woke up to another blizzard, but Boston keeps giving us glimpses of how nice it can be.
Also, here's a link to video that my Dad made of the parade in Carrickmacross, my home town, just so you can see what it looks like!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
