PROVO, Utah — BYU may have taken an early exit from the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, but they're still March Madness national champions nonetheless.
For the fifth time in six years, BYU students dug, pruned and planted their way to the National Collegiate Landscaping Competition title, topping 50 other universities for the win.
The Cougars outscored the second-place finisher by more than 358 points and broke the 5000-point total for the first time in the 48-year history of the tournament.
“We lost last year by 11 points… 11 points! So the team was motivated to win it this year,” said BYU faculty coach Greg Jolley.
“This was the most dominant performance ever by a BYU team.”
The BYU win is the school's ninth landscaping national championship, which topped teams from Auburn, Penn State, Mississippi State, Virginia Tech, N.C. State and Georgia, among others.
Points were given in 30 individual competitions ranging from irrigation troubleshooting, turf and weed identification, and compact excavator operation and exterior landscape design.
Jolley said he believes BYU’s domination is this competition is because of the school's approach, which unlike other competing schools is student driven and not faculty driven.
Team captain and plant and landscape systems major Shelby Monks said one key to BYU’s success was an added spiritual focus.
Every night of the four-day competition the students had a student-run team meeting followed by a devotional.
“The night before the awards ceremony, one of our students gave the sweetest, most inspiring devotionals that brought the team to tears,” Monks said.
Monks wasn’t the only one who felt the lift from the spiritual focus.
“I started tearing up in the parking [lot] just thinking of how wonderful you all are and how blessed I am to hear and feel your testimonies of the Savior,” said one BYU competitor.
Roughly 60 students represented BYU in the competition, with 15 students finishing in the top three of their individual events and nine of them finishing in first place.
BYU students also earned 13 of the 75 scholarships awarded at the event, the highest total of any one school.
BYU student Isaac Broberg was awarded the top prize, a $5,000 President’s Scholarship, while his cousin Spencer Broberg earned the $2,200 Scott Allen Memorial Scholarship and teammate Tyler Stewart took home the $2,000 Doesburg Family Scholarship.
“I couldn’t help but feel that our students are helping fulfill, in at least a small way, the words of Spencer W. Kimball in his Second Century address when he spoke of BYU students having a unique light that we can send forth into the educational world,” said faculty coach Phil Allen.
“I really feel like our team has done some special things here that are left undone by other institutions.”
