For college basketball fans, there is nothing better than March Madness and Allen and Jacob Catrett were able to attend games in the first two rounds of the tournament.

“It’s something that he (Jacob) has wanted to do for the past few years,” Allen said of his son. “His birthday is in January, but we are always busy with basketball at that time of year. When I saw that there were a couple of sites for the tournament this year that were kind of close, I told him that he could pick one.”

Jacob chose to the Jacksonville University site as their destination.

“I told that we could wait until brackets were set or go ahead a pick,” Allen said. “He wanted to go ahead and pick.”

A few months later, father and son set off on their adventure.

“We got to Jacksonville on Friday night and woke up on Saturday to walk around the campus,” Allen said. “Jacksonville University finished runner-up in the 1970 tournament and we went to see the facilities. We also went to see the Jaguars stadium, the semi-pro baseball stadium and the university’s softball field.”

After touring around the campus, the pair headed to arena where they watched No. 1-seed Virginia take on No. 9-seed Oklahoma.

“We watched some good games in Jacksonville,” Allen said. “We decided that we wanted to drive up to Columbus (South Carolina) to watch Duke since we are both Duke fans. It was a chance to watch two No. 1 seeds play in the same day.

“Going to see March Madness in general was pretty amazing,” Jacob said. “That Duke game was the most memorable part of the trip. It was a great game.”

His father agreed that the Duke versus University of Central Florida game was a highlight of the trip.

“The Duke/UCF game was the best of all the games we saw,” Allen said. “All of it was fun, but that was probably the best part of the trip. What makes March Madness so great is seeing the underdogs beat teams that they aren’t supposed to. Duke pulled it out at the end, but that was a great game. We had a lot of fun on the trip together. It’s something that he has wanted to do for several years and I’m happy that we were finally able to get to enjoy this together. With both of us being big basketball fans, especially college basketball, this was a great trip.”

Jacob said that the trip meant a lot to him.

“It was a great trip,” Jacob said. “I’m so thankful to have a great dad that is able to take me to things like this.”

Allen is the girls and boys head basketball coach and head softball coach at Red Level High School.

Jacob is a senior at RLHS and will attend to the University of Alabama, where he will be a manager for the women’s basketball team while pursuing his education.

Jacob played for his father and helps him with the softball team.