Health Care Foundation invites all to join in March Madness

For the seventh year in a row, the Health Care Foundation will team up with the Lucky Bucket to hold a Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Calcutta and all who want to play are invited.

The fundraiser will take place at the Lucky Bullet this Monday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Lucky Bullet and ten percent of the proceeds will go to the Health Care Foundation to help out with medical equipment for all towns in the jurisdiction of Phillips County.

“The money the Health Care Foundation goes to buy any sort of health care equipment through the county, not just Malta,” Greg Ziegler, a foundation chairman told the PCN. “Anything throughout our county that is health care related can be requested by application for potential money.”

That includes supplies for schools as well.

The remaining 90 percent of the gross will be paid out to the players who have teams making the second round and above in the 2016 Men’s NCAA Tournament.

The event will bid 32 teams, some low risk and some that may surprise as sleeper teams. There is no minimum for a bid offering.

“Some teams have gone as low as twenty dollars and others have gone for over a thousand,” Ziegler said. “You have some small teams that go big in the tournament depending on upsets.”

All numbers following this sentence were taken from previous years.

Last year’s national champion won 18 percent of the pot, which was $2,278 of the $11,394 allotted for the participants along with winning from the previous rounds. Last year’s event raised $1,266 for the Health Care Foundation. Cumulatively, the championship winner won a grand total of around $4,200 for that team.

“Last year’s tournament winner went for around $1,400 dollars,” Ziegler said. “When UConn won a couple of years, the team was only bought for $130 and won almost $4,000.

For those who bought a team that made the championship game, they received $1,082 along with previous winnings. For those who had a team make the Final Four $512 was awarded along with winnings from the previous rounds. An Elite Eight team won $227 plus previous winnings. A Sweet Sixteen team won $97 dollars along with $57 for making it to the Second Round.

The beauty of the contest is that the tournament has had plenty of upsets making any team available a possible money winner.

Ziegler recalls when a low-selling team earned a bidder a large sum of cash.

“You always have that little seed team that comes through,” Ziegler said. “Someone bought Davidson for $30 back in the day when Stephen Curry (was with them) and it made them over $1,000.”

Ziegler also mentioned that bidders have combined to buy teams together.

“Obviously, the more teams you buy, the more chance you have at making money in the tournament,” Ziegler said.

The event will have an auctioneer start bids for teams one by one and after all the individual teams are auctioned off, there will be a separate auction for college divisions.

“If a team out of that division wins the whole thing, you win the division pot,” Ziegler said.

One thing is for sure, the total gross has grown in each year the Health Care Foundation has hosted the event. The idea was conceived by Ward VanWichen seven years ago.

“No one was doing it in town,” Ziegler said. “He wanted someone to do it, so he thought it would be a good way to tie in the Health Care Foundation with March Madness.”

“The event will give you a reason to watch college basketball all year around,” Ziegler said. “If you’re rooting for a team you tend to watch it more.”