As the madness has passed, basketball connoisseurs still reminisce on the 2024 men’s and women’s NCAA March Madness tournaments. The tournaments spanned for weeks in March and April, consisting of 68 basketball teams competing in a series of elimination games. The tournament was a thriller, bringing game winners, upsets, and legendary performances. While at Pine Crest, the Sports Analytics Club hosts a typical bracket challenge for its members, biology and American history courses have taken their own approaches to the tournament.

AP Biology and Biology Honors courses have participated in the March Mammal Madness tournament over the last few years. This tournament revolves around simulated combat between various organisms in a 64-animal bracket, based on scientific research and chance. Katie Hinde, a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, created the tournament, in which her team seeds the different animals by temperament, diet, social behavior, environment, size, and fight style. Similar to the rounds of March Madness, each round of this tournament has a scheduled day and time, where the result is posted on Arizona State’s March Mammal Madness blog.  The battles also have a sports-reporting style recap of the event. This year’s bracket included the four divisions of “Epic Animals,” “Rainbow Collection, “Connoisseur Critters,” and “Take a Bow.” In the championship battle, the three-seeded Great White Shark outlasted the two-seeded Giant Squid. Students loved participating in this challenge, Emma Supple ‘25 said, “March Mammal Madness is great because it is so unpredictable, and some of the matchups are funny. I also enjoyed being competitive with my class even though we did not have very good brackets”. Future biology students should look forward to participating in next year’s tournament, as each year brings new and exciting animals.

In the Social Sciences department, the AP United States History course created its own March Madness bracket. The bracket consists of 68 seeds, which are based on notable people, laws, events, and ideas from American history. These four topics are each one of the four divisions of the bracket. The winner of each match is decided by daily surveys, where students pick which seed had a greater impact on American history and modern American society. Zach Moss ‘26 said, “The tournament is great because it helps me test my APUSH knowledge, and it is fun to be able to choose the winner of each game.”  This bracket provides an engaging platform for students to explore and debate the significance of different parts of American history. 

From simulated animal combat to historical American matchups, Pine Crest classes have used creative ways to add the excitement of March Madness into learning experiences. These approaches not only test students’ knowledge but also deepen their understanding of biology and American history.