It creates a connection with people of all kinds, in places of all sorts.
South Carolina's women's basketball team celebrates its SEC tournament championship in Greenville, S.C., on March 10. The moment was thick with anticipation: The top-ranked team in women’s college basketball, the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, trailed the University of Tennessee by two points in a game earlier this month. It was the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference tournament, and just a single second remained. Two sets of fans were moments from a miracle.
The teams’ fanbases hoped for the impossible. Fans of the game itself anxiously awaited the inevitable highlight. The in-bounds pass found. Onscreen, there was a tangle of people and emotions. Living rooms and group chats and social media all sprang to life, filled with fans wanting to share the experience. I bounced up from the couch in disbelief, spilling my beer. My heart was racing, my blood pressure rising.
I’d warned my new doctor this would happen. During our first visit a few days earlier, I mentioned taking daily blood pressure readings at home, because hypertension runs in the family. She asked when it tended to be highest. “In the mornings,” I answered, then added a little quip to help break the ice: “And when watching college basketball.” Her eyes caught the University of North Carolina Tar Heels logo on my pullover. I could see she had a story.
A lifetime later, in my doctor’s office, a heart attack was the very thing she was trying to help me avoid. She explained how high blood pressure, left unchecked, damages the body’s organs over time. Kidneys, the brain, even the eyes. Some folks can make lifestyle changes and fix the issue completely. But others are predisposed and need daily medication for the rest of their lives. I told her that hypertension-induced heart failure took my grandfather in his 50s.
As I was leaving the exam room, my doctor’s coffee mug caught my eye. The logo of her alma mater — the University of Michigan Wolverines — was emblazoned across it. She described a tournament memory while walking me out: She was an undergrad during, named for the quintet of freshmen in 1991 thought by many to be the best recruiting class in men’s college basketball history. This starting five of fabulous players became cultural icons and a national sensation.
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