I was often told that Richard was just like me. While not always true, one area we were in sync was our love of sports.

And Richard was a sportsaholic for sure.

Richard wasn’t a gifted athlete (sorry kid, but it’s true). But he had a big heart.

He loved to compete. And I think he really enjoyed being on a team and just hanging with the guys.

He’d play just about anything.

As the picture above shows, he was always ready for a game. Missing from the picture are his racketball gear and his golf clubs.

In high school he was on the power weight lifting team, the ultimate frizbee team and he did shotput and discus on the track team.

He never could make the basketball team. But he played intramural basketball every year, often hunting down guys and starting his own team.

At one of the Compassionate Friends meetings Debbie went to, she had to bring in something that was important to Richard.

Richard’s state championship ring from the track team was one of those things. He was really proud of that.

This is my first “March Madness” without Richard here to talk over the games with. You can bet he has his brackets filled out for the tournament.

The early rounds of the tournament have late games. It wasn’t unusual for a game to still be in progress when I got home from work at 12:30am. Debbie would be in bed sleeping and Richard would be sitting there with no lights on in the house watching the games. He would be updating his bracket.

We would watch the remainder of the games together and he’d update me on the games I missed. We’d usually get in a debate about who we thought would win the next round and why.

I’m really going to miss that.