There is one sports event that everyone looks forward to every year. An event that sparks interest and competition between every sports geek in the country. March Madness is a college basketball tournament that happens in March every year that draws the attention of everyone for its scale and the element of surprise.

For the first time, the Liberty library took on the tournament challenge and created its own version of March Madness. For the three weeks of school that there is in March before spring break, each week during soar time, the library is holding a tournament with games. The first week was Connect 4 which sparked attention from not just the regulars in the library during soar time, but also from people that don’t usually go in there during that time.

Librarian Nikki Playle came up with idea for this game tournament after previously doing a tournament with teachers and their books.

“We had done brackets with the teachers and their books as well as teachers sports teams,” Playle said. “So we were just sitting there and I said, what if we did games.”

Both librarians loved the idea and took it to the regulars in the library during SOAR Time and proposed the idea to see if it would intrigue them. It did.

The new tournament sparked attention from around the school, and not too long after it was announced the first game of the tournament was filled up with 24 spots taken. The first round of Connect 4 started on Monday, March 2, and grew an audience after the library looked like a professional game area.

Milo Weston (12) originally didn’t know what was going on until he was told by some of his friends that there were going to be games being played during SOAR Time.

“I didn’t really know that we were doing a game tournament until she was telling some of my friends about it,” Weston said. “I thought it’d be fun to join, I didn’t have anything else going on.”

After a stressful four rounds, Noah Spoor (9) and Landon Kerr (10) were the lone two players left in the championship. In the end Spoor came out on top winning a gift basket full of chocolates, a shirt, and the brand new Connect 4 Frenzy game.

“It was a surprisingly stressful couple days playing those games,” Kerr said.

However, while Spoor got the ultimate big prize, everyone who participated in the tournament left with something, so that no one left empty handed.

“You get a chocolate bar for just showing up, so it’s very much worth it,” Kerr said.