I had no choice but to root for Duke. It was March of my first grade year and my dad had selected the Duke Blue Devils as the NCAA Basketball champions for his March Madness bracket. With a bet of more than five hundred dollars on the line between him and his co-workers, cheering for any other team would have been absolutely absurd. Ever since this year when I witnessed the bouncing enthusiasm of the Cameron Crazies and the third national championship of the basketball team, I had my mind set on becoming a Blue Devil.
One year after this thrilling run to the national title, a player by the name of J.J. Redick emerged as the captain of my local high school’s basketball team. I attended each and every game his senior year and immediately began to idolize him. I waited in line for hours to obtain his autograph and even went to the extreme of entering a “young authors” contest with a narrative I had composed about the star. When I learned that the McDonald’s All American was going to be continuing his basketball career at Duke University, it furthered my fascination into the college. After later visiting the college numerous times in high school, my passion for Duke remained unchanged. Finally stepping foot into Cameron Indoor Stadium was like a fantasy materializing directly before me. Taking a glimpse of the court that my childhood hero had once played on and beholding the legendary ambiance that existed in the stadium assured me that Duke was a perfect match for me. However, these trivial childhood experiences are not the only reasons I feel Duke is an excellent match for me and are not the sole things that attract me to Duke. Nevertheless, these incidents were what introduced me to the university and without their tremendous influence, my immense attraction towards Duke would not exist today.