March Madness, which has been held since 1939, is “a single-elimination tournament of 68 [NCAA (The National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division I men’s basketball] teams that compete in seven rounds for the national championship.” The rounds are two days each, and include First Four, First Round/Round of 64, Second Round/Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Final Four, and the National Championship, during which the ultimate winner is crowned.

Marketing is an elective class that’s offered at Judson High School, and is taught by Ms. Debra Diaz. For the second year in a row, Diaz held a March Madness bracket competition, allowing her Advanced Marketing students to market the competition.

The purpose of the competition was to create a learning opportunity for her Advanced Marketing students, who take the class for both second and third period. According to Diaz, “the class is broken [up] into groups” that were in charge of the following aspects of the competition: public relations, social media, event coordination, volunteers and donations, marketing, and web design.

“Since I teach Sports and Entertainment Marketing I & II and Advance Marketing, I wanted to bring real world experiences into my class. I am a huge fan of teaching beyond the classroom. This being said, I always incorporate today’s events into my lessons. The main lesson we are covering is “fan experience.” My goal is to teach how it’s marketing specialists’ responsibilities to attract customers’ interest and to retain these customers. By allowing them to do hands-on work, the students retain more [information],” Diaz divulged.

This competition is a unique opportunity for the advanced marketing students to create tangible evidence that they have a firm understanding of what they’ve learned in class.

“This event is a special event we do during the NCAA March Madness Competition. It is a great way to bring fun while learning. But also, it draws attention to my class: another way of marketing the marketing class,” Diaz explained.

Diaz described the mechanics of the March Madness bracket competition, which parallels its real life counterpart.

“The bracket [that a student creates] starts off with 64 teams that are preselected by the NCAA. Then the student has to select who they feel will win each game[, who will] advance to the Final Four and [who’ll] then ultimately win it all,” Diaz expressed.

While Diaz didn’t submit a bracket, she still had a winner in mind.

“Since I am the main sponsor of this event, I did not submit a bracket. This is another learning opportunity. When you are the host of an event or competition, you should not compete. This will eliminate any unfair advantage thoughts that participants may have. If I may say, I see Duke taking it all,” Diaz said.

75 people, including administrators, teachers, and students, entered the competition this year. The competition ends with three winners. Whenever someone correctly guesses the winner of a certain round, the team gets highlighted. The more highlighted teams, the more points that student scores. The winners for this year’s competition were junior Jerry Rodriguez Guardado in third place, who won a mini JBL Bluetooth speaker, sophomore John Hudgins in second place, who won an Instax mini SE polaroid camera, and senior Kayla King in first place, who won a SKYHAWK Foldable Video GPS Drone.

“I would like to thank Stephanie Hernandez with Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union (RBFCU) for sponsoring the prizes and Victoria with Monarch Trophy Studio for sponsoring the first place trophy,” Diaz stated.

Junior Omari Carr played a key role in the creation of the Judson March Madness website, designed by the Advanced Marketing web design team to market the bracket competition.

Carr described the process of creating the website.

“I built it with Canva, and it contains info on the competition, how to join and an online bracket to keep track of March Madness winners,” Carr explained.

Carr also explained the wider scope of marketing the competition, including the trials and tribulations that comes with attempting to have the Advanced Marketing efforts recognized. 

“A lot of time and effort has gone into marketing the competition. We made two social medias [a X (formerly Twitter) account and an Instagram account], multiple flyers, a website and even a large bracket poster. It has been very difficult because a lot of people haven’t noticed what we do. However, it has worked in getting some people from outside the class [to participate in the competition], like from other business classes or other teachers,” Carr stated.

Despite these challenges, the experience was still enjoyable for Carr.

“I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with Canva and design styles,” Carr said.

The Advanced Marketing class markets a multitude of events and clubs.

“I’ve marketed for the club STEM Careers Explorations. They’re the club that goes out on field trips to places like The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, and The Hart Research Institute on the Gulf Coast. The club is run by Mr. Rose, who also runs the prayer breakfast, among other clubs,” Carr divulged.

In addition to the marketing competition, another event took place at Judson High School regarding March Madness. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented itself for Judson High School basketball players: an invitation to work at the Final Four Tournament, which took place on April 5 and 7, 2025. This opportunity was provided by Judson High School staff member, Coach Calvert. The Final Four likely won’t be held in San Antonio again for almost a decade, so being able to work at the Final Four Tournament as a Judson High School student won’t be possible again for a very long time.

Two such students, junior Mariah Johnson and senior Elijah Favela, had the opportunity to work at the Final Four Tournament and shared how the experience went, and how they heard about it.

Junior Mariah Johnson “originally heard about this experience from [her] head coach, Coach Camacho,” and “thought it would be a great opportunity to see college basketball play out right in front of [her].

Johnson shared that this was an especially rare Final Four tournament, as “all No. 1 seeds (Auburn, Duke, Florida, and Houston) advanced to the Final Four, marking the second time in history since 1979.”

Johnson was tasked with welcoming the college that corresponded with the flag that she was given (in her case, the Florida Gators). She held the flag during the “National Anthem.” Johnson revealed that she and her fellow Final Four workers “went in the day before and rehearsed for… three hours.” The reason why the rehearsal lasted so long is because of “how hard it is to pull out a huge flag.” The whole process was “really fast-paced.

Johnson shared that working the Final Four tournament helped her overcome her stage and crowd fright, since “not only [were her and the other Final Four workers] in front of over 2,000 people, [they were] also on national television, so if [they] messed up, tripped while running, or even fell off the elevated court, millions of people would have seen.”

Johnson enjoyed the experience because she could directly see “how much of an impact sports played a role in students & families,” and had comradery with the coaches (Coach Kenzie, Logan, and Johnson) and the boys varsity basketball players who worked at the tournament as well.

“If I was asked to volunteer once more, I would definitely love to be a part of something like this again,” said Johnson.

Senior Elijah Favela was informed by one of his friends about working the event.

Favela worked at the Fan Fest, and “was just in charge of helping [his] station… have fun with the fans and make it a good time for them.”

Favela believes that working the Final Four tournament “will benefit [him] with more work experience and [being] able to cooperate with people and have a good time [while doing so].”

Favela also enjoyed his experience.  It was 100% [an] enjoyable experience. It almost didn’t feel like a job; it felt like I was doing it because I just wanted to, and on top of that I got paid as well. I could definitely see myself doing this again.”

Both the March Madness bracket competition and the Final Four tournament provided real-world experience when it comes to the workforce. The skills that the students gained from these experiences will hopefully aid them in their future endeavors.