By Michael D. Clark
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Matt Luther, a seventh-graderat Madeira Junior/Senior High School, talks to his teammates about what to name their basketball team before games begin Friday night at Madeira Madness. The students picked teams to cheer for in the basketball tournament, then researched those universities as if they were going to attend the schools upon their own graduation from high school. The Enquirer/MEGGAN BOOKER

MADEIRA - Teens here are inflicted with their own brand of "March Madness."

Symptoms include exhaustive research of universities in the NCAA Tournament, spontaneously singing school fight songs and detailed planning of their own college careers.

The Madeira Junior High School version of the annual March ailment included an "All-Nite Madness" event Friday evening to early Saturday morning, when more than 110 seventh-grade students played basketball and computer games, danced, played board games and watched NCAA Tournament games from dusk until dawn in the school gym.

But there is sound educational method to this school-sponsored madness, seventh-grade math teacher Mary Rutledge said as she stood in the middle of her busy classroom decorated with student-made university pennants, a giant NCAA Tournament board and school fight songs playing in the background.

"It's fun but it's also a lot of work," Rutledge said.

Students form small teams and then pick a college from the NCAA men and women's tournaments, and then apply mathematics and dimensions in designing the lettering for their school's pennant.

They contact universities for application requirements and research the school - everything from history to fight song - while planning their own academic and financial aid as if they were going to attend the school.

The unusual interdisciplinary approach culminates in the student teams creating computer, power-point presentations, which they will present to Madeira High School seniors after the tournament.

"It gets them thinking about college, and understanding what is involved academically and financially," Rutledge said.

The all-night celebration in the school gym, which is supervised by parents and teachers, is the largest part of an overall enjoyable project, said seventh-grader J.T. Doran, who picked Ohio State's women's team and is researching the school.

"What we get out of this is learning all about a college and what college life is like," he said.

Classmate Tierison Maier, who picked Boston College's women's team, agreed.

"It gives you an idea of what major you want to study and which colleges offer those majors."

Though she is only 13, Tierison has already experienced her first collegiate sticker shock when her research revealed that one year's tuition at Boston College is about $38,000.

"That really surprised me," she said.

E-mail mclark@enquirer.com