The Warning Signs Of 16th Region March Madness

February 28, 2013

By AJ Stadelmeyer of Ashland Paul G Blazer High School

Here Are The Top 60 Signs That You Have Been Infected With The 16th Region March Madness Virus

By AJ "Doc" Stadelmeyer MA, ATC

#60 You are a teacher/coach, and you manage to figure out a way to put in your lesson plans showing game film in your classes as an educational activity, so that you can study more film.

#59 You have maxed out more than 5 camera disks taking photographs of your teams games.

#58 When you start to count the number of games left in a week by the numbers of games you have left.

#57 Your number one source for all sports information is Dickie Martin.

#56 You have memorized all of your schools cheers and cheer leader routines, as well as your dance teams routines.

#55 You try to get every member of your immediate family and extended family on your schools game pass list because you are broke from all the games you went to this season. Your third cousin twice removed Bubba just has to see your game tonight.

#54 When your Friday newspaper reading consists only of reading the region basketball stats leaders report.

#53 You neglect everything you are supposed to do at work in order to put information together for the IHigh.com game broadcast you are doing that night.

#52  You play golf with Rex Cooksey only to find out the status of Fairview players or to get insider information from Rex..

#51. If your list of favorites on your computer consists only of Ihigh.com, school21.ihigh.com, Max Preps.com,  khsaa.org and BluegrassPreps.com.

#50. You get ten people together and go to the YMCA to re-create the last ten seconds of the district or region championship game.

#49. When you refer to your lunch hour and coffee breaks as half time and timeouts.

#48. If your boss yells at you for something at work, and you “T” him up.

#47. You go to games your team isn’t playing in to scout the athletic trainers, managers, statisticians, or photographers.

#46. If all 6 buttons on you car stereo are set to 97.1 FM, B97, the Voice of the Ashland Tomcats.

#45. If you catch anyone with a whistle, wearing stripes and named Bobby, Bob, Joe, Paul or Larry, reading “Basketball for Dummies.”

#44. You have named any of your children or pets after your team’s coach or after your favorite player. I have a goldfish named “Buddy”, and my pet frog is named “Rex”

#43. Instead of having a normal greeting on your answering machine, your greeting contains your team’s latest scores, stats and injury reports.

#42. Your teams fight song is the ring tone on your cell phone and you call yourself more than 5 times a day to hear it.
#41. If you know where all the opposing teams athletic training rooms are and have visited them more than 10 times trying to find out who’s injured and out for the game.
#40 Your "library" at home consists mostly of past game programs from the last 25 years district and region basketball tournaments, region All A tournaments and Ashland Invitational Tournament programs.
#39 Your cell phone service cuts off your phone because you maxed out your text message limit trying to get updates on games in progress.
#38 You go to your schools athletic trainer and borrow some pre-wrap to use as a hair tie.
#37 At your work place, you have your employer install a loud horn or buzzer that goes off when your workday is over so that you know when it's time to go home.
#36 You have a constant headache from inhaling the carbon monoxide in the bus exhaust from the team buses you have been following to games all week.

#35 You are a coach, it is 10:00 PM on a Sunday night, and you are at school doing lesson plans (ie picking videos for your classes to watch this week) and breaking down game film, instead of spending quality time with your family. This is worse if you are not a coach.
#34 You get confused and think that spending quality time with your family is going to practice and team meetings.
#33 You wear your pajamas backwards and flush ice cubes down your toilet on school nights in order to get a snow day from school on game days, so that your team can rest and get extra practice and film time.
#32 OK, I get superstitious, but not washing your lucky underwear and game socks is a little nasty.
#31 You go deep into your closet and pull out your Buddy Biggs fan faces from the 2007 tournament.
#30 You start trying to figure out tax deductions for trips to games, mileage, concessions, admission costs, programs, souvenirs, silly hats and noisemakers.
#29 You actually start to lose weight because concession stands do not take credit or debt cards.
#28 You have actually been to the metropolises of Lloyd, Cannonsburg, Sandy Hook, West Liberty, Frenchburg, Morehead, Russell, Grayson, Flemingsburg, Olive Hill, Worthington, Owingsville, and Vanceburg at least once in the last 2 months.
#27 You check http://school21.ihigh.com on an hourly basis for updates, stories, stats, rosters and current photos.
#26 If a co-worker/fellow student misses work or school, you try to find out if they will be available for the next days game. You ask for a doctor’s note and injury report when they return.
#25 You spend more time on Bluegrass Preps and Max Preps than you do eating, sleeping, bathing or working.
#24 You do an internet people search to find out the home addresses, phone numbers, places of work, medical history, eye exam results, and family trees of all of the officials working this years tournament.
#23 You know that March is always National Athletic Training month because you remember hearing the announcement every night at the tournament for the last 10 years.
#22 You have actually eaten at Penny Mart in Sandy Hook, KY, and you are not an Elliott County fan.
#21 If you get a splinter, cold, headache, blister, cut or bruise, you go to see your schools athletic trainer instead of your family doctor.
#20 Your morning routine includes immediately getting on Bluegrass Preps.com to see if anyone has been talking smack about you or your team.
#19 If someone bumps into you at the water cooler or store, you immediately start arguing about whether they fouled you or not. You check to see if anyone got it on film.
#18 You think that the four food groups are hotdogs, nachos, cold pizza, and popcorn.
#17 What day it is slips your mind, but you know the locations, start times, and opponents for all of the boys and girls basketball tournament games in the region.
#16 You go to watch games not involving your favorite team, in gyms other than your schools gym, on the nights that your team is not playing.
#15 You have not purchased groceries in two weeks because you are eating all of your meals at concession stands and in hospitality rooms.
#14 When you throw trash away, you shoot it into the trash basket, you yell "three" if you make it, you hang a piece of paper with a 3 on it off of your desk, and you dance around the room.
#13 When your team shoots free throws at the end of the game, they say that the huge, wide basketball rim they played with in November now looks like a Dixie cup.
#12 Every adult man or woman that you talk to during the week can be addressed as "coach".
#11 You have framed copies of the Daily Independent district and region match ups and predictions hanging next to your desk. Of course you don't need them, because you have them memorized.
#10 You try to get your state representative to sponsor a bill making the day of the KHSAA State Tournament bracket draws a state holiday.
#9 The coaches' spouses won't stay in the room with their loved one for more than a minute or two because their spouse has not changed their coaching clothing in more than a week.
#8 When you ask someone "what time is it?", you mistakenly ask "what quarter are we in?"
#7 Every time that you go to the restroom or soda pop machine at work or school, you call a time out.
#6 When it is time to leave class or work, you start counting down the seconds, then tenths of seconds.
#5 After your team wins it's tournament game, you rush home and get on the Internet to find out what happened in all of the other games in the region and state, and to look for photos and stories from your teams game.

#4 You get so superstitious that you wear the same clothing to every game, you won’t wear ties to games that you have worn to games that you lost, you eat the same things on game day, you drive to school or work the same way on game days, you stand in the same place during pre-game warm ups, and when you cross railroad tracks driving to the game, you lift your feet AND touch metal.
#3 You say goodbye to your family in the morning by singing "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good bye".
#2 Even if your hair looks horrible and needs cutting, you can’t get a haircut because getting hair cut on a winning streak is bad luck.
#1 You wake up from a dream where Ashland’s Dikembe Dixson slam dunked on your photographer wife, then you remembered that it really happened at the Boyd vs. Ashland district championship game.