March is the start of spring, but also when college basketball brings out the madness in fans. People across the country dust off their college gear and compete with family, friends, and colleagues on who can pick the winning team. This year, Perficient colleagues had a first-hand experience.
The Dawn of a Rivalry
For the past four years, Perficient’s St. Louis Social and Culture Committee has organized a March Madness bracket challenge. The challenge allows colleagues to create and submit a bracket based on their best guesses on how both the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament will play out. These brackets are extremely popular among employees in the St. Louis office, with the lighthearted competition adding some further excitement to the month at work. In 2021, the St. Louis office’s bracket excitement piqued the interest of our Southeast offices. The two teams engaged in a head-to-head challenge to see which office location could create the strongest set of brackets. St. Louis came out victorious, and a rivalry was born!
A Buzzer-Beater Conclusion
The St. Louis vs. Southeast March Madness competition caused an infectious buzz across Perficient, catching the interest of several other Perficient office locations. Four more offices requested to join the competition and compete in 2022 to determine which office would be crowned the champion. Seven locations participated in the challenge including the Southeast, St. Louis, Detroit, Ohio, Minneapolis, Dallas, and Southern California. Each created their own league to gather employee submissions. The top ten scores from each office were totaled to determine that office’s final score, and the highest overall identified our winner.
With the madness of this year’s tournament, it was difficult for people’s brackets to succeed. The Men’s and Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournaments are typically filled with upsets, buzzer-beater endings, and underdog victories, and this year’s tournament was no different. There were a ton of memorable moments including the Cinderella story of Saint Peter’s to UNC and Duke “duking” it out. But in the end, Kansas won it all with the largest comeback ever in title game history! Despite this madness, Perficient’s Southeast offices found huge success with their top ten total scores coming out to a whopping 9,920, earning them the title of Perficient’s 2022 March Madness Champion! The St. Louis office followed closely behind, with Detroit taking third place.
Slam Dunk of a Success
Overall, this event had great participation across the company, with almost 70 colleagues in St. Louis alone submitting a bracket, and 20 – 30 employees in each of the other participating offices submitting. The momentum of Perficient’s March Madness competition has grown every year, and we are excited to see it grow into an even larger event across the company in the coming years!
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