UNCG making the NCAA Tournament has never made me more proud of going to the wrong school

I’ve only cried about sports three times in my life: When the Charlotte Hornets announced they would be moving to New Orleans, when the Sydney Roosters won the NRL Premiership in 2002, and Monday night when UNC-Greensboro made the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2001.

It wasn’t so much that I got emotional seeing UNCG win the SoCon title, but what that all meant to me. It’s been difficult to be invested in college sports for my entire adult life. Maybe you know, but I accidentally thought I was going to the University of North Carolina — the real one in Chapel Hill with the basketball pedigree and Michael Jordan. I didn’t learn I wasn’t until the first day of orientation at UNCG in 2003.

Three years have passed since I wrote about that moment in my life, and it still resonates with readers. I know that people laugh at me, because the whole thing seems surreal — but my life has been a series of surreal moments stitched together into a tapestry of woeful ineptitude, punctuated with extreme joy.

When I saw UNCG dancing on the court, and the bottom line reading “UNCG - 2018 SOCON CHAMPIONS,” it was one of those moments of extreme joy for me. The beautiful thing about catharsis is that sometimes it creeps up on you, and when it does you become an emotional wreck. I had to go outside, take a walk around the block and get some air. “So this is what it feels like,” I said to myself. For the first time I knew what it was like for my school to actually accomplish something in a major sport.

I’ve never been able to really support the Tar Heels as an adult, even though I grew up being a fan. It doesn’t matter that I have eight family members who went there — those cuts from 2003 are still too deep. But now I get to see my school, the place I attended, and fell in love with — they’re actually going to play in the NCAA tournament again!

At this point I planned to give you some lengthy explanation about why you should support UNCG, and how the school should be your Cinderella. But really, it would just mean a whole lot to me if you’d join in this journey. It’s unlikely the school will go far, but heck — they beat NC State earlier this season when nobody expected them to. It’s March, and weird things happen in March.

UNCG is a place that became my home at a time in my life I was transient and felt I belonged nowhere. Maybe the school was never good at sports while I was there, but I met lifelong friends, and frequented the on-campus Bojangles, and ate way too many Yum Yum Hot Dogs.

It’s a school whose “notable alumni” section on Wikipedia includes Samwell, who sang “What What (In the Butt)” and a professional Super Smash Bros. player. A school whose logo is the Roman goddess Minerva, but mascot is a Greek Spartan. Nothing makes sense at UNCG, and yet everything does.

Now they won at basketball. Suddenly nothing makes sense to me either, but at the same time it all does as well. This is what it’s like to support a school who won. I know what it feels like now. Thank you, UNCG men’s basketball.