March Madness

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The tournament teams include champions from 31 Division I conferences (which receive automatic bids), and 37 teams which are awarded at-large berths. These “at-large” teams are chosen by an NCAA selection committee, as detailed below. The 68 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single elimination “bracket”, which predetermines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each team is “seeded”, or ranked, within its region. After an initial four games between eight lower-seeded teams, the tournament takes place over the course of three weekends, at pre-selected neutral sites around the United States. Lower-seeded teams are placed in the bracket against higher seeded teams. Each weekend cuts three-fourths of the teams, from a Round of 64, to a “Sweet Sixteen”, to a “Final Four”; the Final four is usually played on the first weekend in April. These four teams, one from each region, battle it out in one destination for the national championship.

 

Don Jakeway of Johnstown, Ohio

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Sixty-eight years ago, paratrooper Don Jakeway of Johnstown helped liberate a Jewish family from the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II. Last week, Jakeway met the last survivor of that family, thanks to New Albany resident Mark Easton.

Easton said he met Jakeway through a veterans’ organization. After hearing Jakeway’s story about liberating the Jakobs family from Holland, he set out to find any surviving members of the family.

Through an Internet search, he found Bert Jakobs living in California.

“I called him and said there’s someone I think you’ve got to meet,” Easton said.

Jakobs, 78, said he was surprised, especially when he found out that Jakeway had at one time corresponded with Edith Jakobs, his older sister. Jakeway wrote to Edith many years after the war was over.

“I appreciated the opportunity to meet (Jakeway),” Jakobs said. “Mark (Easton) was extremely instrumental in bringing us together. Without him, we never would have met.”

The two men shared their stories and some tears Feb. 2 when they spoke at the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts to New Albany seventh- and eighth-graders, as well as some high school students taking American history. Easton said the two men also were scheduled to speak to students at the Columbus Jewish Day School Feb. 3 and at schools in the Johnstown-Monroe School District and Granville Exempted Village School District the week of Feb. 6.

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By Lori Wince

ThisWeek Community Newspapers Saturday February 11, 2012 10:45 AM