If you’re anything like me, filling out your March Madness bracket can be one of the most nerve-racking moments of your day.

If you’re not like me and you think that’s weird, you must know some calming techniques that I should learn. Or you hate basketball, one of the two.

And as if going through the painstaking process of choosing your teams and getting your bracket just perfect weren’t stressful enough, now you sit and wait. Literally. Sit on your bum and watch your bracket either fall apart or be so wonderful people will think you somehow cheated.

You can’t hurry the process of March Madness.

Oh, it is indeed a process. A stressful, wonderful, heart attack-inducing process.

First, you wait for the highly anticipated Selection Sunday. The final rankings of teams have been released and games have been decided. Now the fun can begin – filling out your bracket.

After that, it’s all chance.

I personally used to get really upset when my bracket would get busted. Now I like it. I’m all about the Cinderella stories that take place.

If you didn’t know, I’m a huge Butler Bulldogs fan. Official underdawgs (see what I did there?) of the tournament.

Now while they haven’t won a championship yet, it’s coming. I can feel it. But that’s beside the point.

But it never fails. After I fill out my bracket and the games start, I immediately freak out and think I’ve picked the worst teams possible. Honestly, when I watch games, I don’t yell the typical fan things like, “Are you blind?! So-and-so was open!”, “Ref! Bad call!”, or “You call that a travel?!”.

First round I usually end up yelling things like, “OH MY GOSH I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE YOU GOING TO THE FINAL FOUR. WHAT WAS I THINKING?” which gets me some pretty interesting looks when I watch games with other people or in crowded places.

I like to call this bracket anxiety, which I am convinced could be a real medical condition, but doctors would probably challenge that.

I get so nervous checking scores and comparing it with my bracket, which is slightly ridiculous but, it’s what happens. With March Madness comes brackets, with brackets, come bracket anxiety.

By the time you read this, I probably will have filled out three brackets out of nerves and (hopefully) will have settled on one.

Yes, I fill out multiple brackets at first. Don’t judge me. But I do end up picking my final bracket, and I live my basketball life by that bracket.

I am Erin Alberding, and I am a bracket anxiety survivor.

If you want to compare brackets or judge mine or just take a peek at mine, come find me. I like to fill out my brackets by hand, I have no idea why, personal preference I suppose.

SPOILER ALERT: I will have Butler University winning the championship on every bracket. Call me an optimist or a dreamer or just plain crazy, but the Butler Bulldogs are going to win a championship … someday.

I feel like violence is something that does not necessarily need introduction.

Everyone knows what it is.

Violence, sadly, is prevalent in every major league of sports.

The most recent violent outburst hailed from the home of South African Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. Police were called into Pistorius’ house in the wee hours of the morning because a shooting had been reported.

While details have remained murky in the past few weeks of investigation and stories have flip-flopped, one thing is certain: Pistorius’ girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot through the bathroom door at three in the morning.

But I’m not here to talk the dirty details on the case because you can simply check Yahoo! or ABC News for those.

Many times people associate the term “violence” with fights. You know, fisticoffs, black eyes and stuff. But I think violence is bigger than that, unfortunately.

Violence is when an entire MLB team runs out onto the baseball diamond to fight the other team because of a bad call, or because the other team taunted them, etc.

Violence is the NFL players who purposely set out to injure other players, for money or selfish reasons.

Violence is every NHL game. (Kidding).

But back to being serious. Violence is real and it is serious.

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines violence as, “exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse.”

It also defines it as,“intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force.” A “vehement feeling or expression.”

If I had to define “sporting violence” it would be a combination of all three. So let’s see what I can come up with.

Sporting violence is an aggressive expression of emotions that exerts intense physical force with the intent to injure or harm.

Sounds pretty accurate to me.

Of course I’m trying to lighten a truly heavy subject. Rarely do people want to read a column that leaves them depressed or upset. But violence is a serious issue. Something that scares me more than the physical act of violence is there is no clear-cut way to stop it.

How do you tell players to calm down or keep their emotions in check when they are playing a game they love? Because then we have to deal with fans who will complain (because they will complain) that the athletes show no emotion.

There is no middle ground.

But there is a bottom line: Violence needs to stop. Sporting world, real world, everywhere. This is a part of the sports industry that everyone could do without. When you think about it what does punching out your opponent do? Honestly. What does it do? Because now your hand hurts, the other person is most likely bruised and/or bleeding and both of you are getting bad publicity. So I will answer for you, what does punching out your opponent do?

Absolutely nothing.

Get in the game and get violence out.

Get your mind out of the gutter, people.

I’m talking sports protection. Gear. Equipment. Helmets, kneepads, elbow pads, shin guards, cups, shoulderpads and for all you paranoid people out there … wrist pads.

I, for one, am all for protection. And that could be due to the fact I was a clumsy child so every type of pad imaginable was used whenever I went rollerblading or biking.

But should protection be mandated or should it be left up to the players themselves?

Because, I mean, I don’t really need someone to tell me to wear a helmet if I am going to get tackled by 400-pound men. That just seems common sense.

But the National Football League mandated that knee and thigh pads be used on every player in the NFL in 2013.

That’s a decision that players and owners alike are grumbling about. It is going to cost more to get uniforms now, it is going to look awkward, etc.

Shouldn’t protection be a decision that is left up to the players?

On one hand, it is their body. It’s theirs to protect and take care of, to protect.

On the other hand, would regulations such as these help prevent serious injuries?

Currently on the CBS website, there is a running list of NBA injuries throughout the season . It’s updated daily. As of Feb. 19, there were 50 injuries on that list, ranging from eye to hand to knee to heart.

Fifty people are not playing a game they love due to injury.

But then comes the hard question: How do you protect yourself from injury in a game like basketball?

You can wear goggles and knee braces all you want but I guarantee someone’s stray elbow is going to whack you. Pending on where they hit you, you could be out for 10 seconds or 10 days.

Which brings me back to my original question: How do you protect yourself from injury in a game like basketball?

Does anyone have an answer?

I feel like there are some sports, such as football, where protection is common sense. Helmet? Yes. Shoulder pads? Yes. Back brace? Yes.

But then again, there are sports like basketball or baseball in which protection from injury is harder to pinpoint. There are certainly preventive steps that can be taken such as tretching, regular workouts and proper cool downs, all measures that can be taken to prevent injury.

I know it is impossible to fully prevent injury, but do we really need to have regulations to tell athletes how to be safe?

Well, here we are again. New year, new classes, new friends, new challenges.

I myself have been faced with quite a few new things: new living arrangements, new job, new responsibilities.

It’s all quite terrifying, but also incredibly exciting.

My name is Erin Alberding, and I have the privilege of being The Sojourn’s sports editor.

I have heavily followed sports my entire life. I have favorite teams that I will cheer for almost religiously (Chicago Bears, Butler Bulldogs), and there are teams I pretend don’t exist (New England Patriots, Duke Blue Devils).

Whether we agree on teams or not, one commonality obviously joins us, our love of sports.

So my fellow Indiana Wesleyan University students, make sure this isn’t just another column that you read and forget (or even worse, skip over completely). Let’s work together.

I want to write on interesting subjects that are relevant to you. So talk to me, email me, Facebook me, find me in Elder Hall or in the Barnes Student Center. I am always up for a rousing sports conversation or to listen to your ideas for articles.

Let’s be a team, IWU.

Was that too cheesy for a first column? I feel like it might be.

In all seriousness however, I don’t want this to be a section that gets skimmed over or ignored. The coaches and student athletes here work too hard to be disregarded.

So now I challenge you. Go to at least one sporting event this year (home games are free for IWU students, so don’t play the “I have no money” card). I know I’m going to plenty. Stop by and hang out, cheer on your classmates, the coaches, Wesley the Wildcat, everyone.

We are IWU and we need to be proud of it.