Meet the squad from North Carolina that hasn’t missed an NCAA Tournament since 1988
It started out as a cool weekend with friends close to home.
Nearly 35 later, it has become an annual ritual of fun and friendship.
Four friends from North Wilkesboro, N.C. — brothers Randy and Ricky Joines, and Buddy Parsons and Dean Shepard — have been attending NCAA Tournament games around the country for the past 35 years.
It took a worldwide pandemic to cancel their trip. Until COVID-19 shut down the country in 2020, they They had tickets for games in Cleveland.
But they’re back on the road and this year they chose Fort Worth, which is hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament at Dickies Arena on Thursday and Saturday.
When they bought the tickets in October, they chose Fort Worth because it was one of the sites they hadn’t yet visited.
It was an especially fortuitous choice for two of them, Shepard and Parsons, who are diehard North Carolina Tar Heels fans. The 8-seed Tar Heels are one of eight teams playing at Dickies Arena. They easily dispatched of 9-seed Marquette Thursday evening to advance to the the second round against top-seed Baylor at a time to be determined Saturday.
The first trip was close to home in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1988. They’ve driven to Knoxville, Tenn., New Orleans, Orlando, and Atlanta. Their first trip that included flying was to Detroit in 2013. They are started making annual shirts celebrating all of the sites over the years about 10 years ago.
Brothers Randy and Ricky Joines, both 55, have basketball in their blood. Randy coached at the high school level for 30 years. Ricky was a college women’s assistant coach for 14 years. The trips have become more tame and less beer-fueled bashes over the years, said Parsons, 62.
“Used to be that we’d be out, running around partying all night and now we’re sitting up here [in the hotel] comparing CPAP machines,” joked Parsons.
“We got old,” said Shepard, 70. “[Back in the day], we’d be at Billy Bob’s right now.”
In fact, they visited Billy Bob’s Texas on Wednesday and watched the bulls in the Stockyards. They’re checking out the rodeo at Cowtown Coliseum on Friday and plan to tour AT&T Stadium in Arlington and The Star in Frisco before they return home on Monday.
Over the years, they’ve seen some classic upsets, including 15-seed Richmond beating 2-seed Syracuse in 1991 and 2-seed Michigan State being upset by Middle Tennessee State in St. Louis in 2016.
“We’ve seen the [eventual champion] several times,” Shepard said.
“We saw NC State lose in Orlando so that kind of bummed the trip out for me,” said Wolfpack fan Randy Joines.
The sting of losses, however, fades. The memories they’ve made will last a lifetime.
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
