March may typically be known for a few things — Spring begins springing, leprechauns are afoot, college hoops — but around General Air Products, it’s now known for one thing: Sprinkler Madness. Taking place during the kickoff of the NCAA’s March Madness Tournament, think of Sprinkler Madness as a whole lot of Fire Protection Industry training with a little bit of tournament basketball tossed in.
The Sprinkler Madness stats speak for themselves: two days, 40 contractors, 11 presentations from industry leaders & vendors, and one highly-anticipated pop-a-shot contest (highly-anticipated for us, at least!). When attendees arrived at the General Air Products Fire Sprinkler Training Center in Exton, PA for two days of training on March 16 and 17, they knew right away this wasn’t your typical training. Perhaps it was the giant NCAA Men’s Tournament Bracket hung up on the wall flanked by our industry sponsors’ very own basketball jerseys, or the fact that they were able to fill out their own bracket in hopes of winning a $1,000 grand prize. Maybe it was the TVs playing the first round of tournament games or the food trucks and cornhole set up in the parking lot.
While the two days were a lot of fun and games, they weren’t all fun and games — we managed to fit in a whole bunch of productive seminars, hands-on training with live equipment, and a lot of valuable industry discourse. Day One featured presentations from General Air’s Kyle Curran, Viking‘s Brian Berkley, Jim McHugh from AGF Manufacturing, Michael Braun from Victaulic, Reliable Automatic Sprinkler’s Brandon Telford, and the tag team from ASC Engineered Solutions, John Deutsh and Steve Tajer. On Day Two, it was Bill Phair from Ferguson Fire & Fabrication, Scott Monroe from Zurn, Marty Tomasic from Tornatech, Chris Dilday from SPP Pumps, and Core & Main’s own Joe Soloman who led training sessions. It was a productive and informative two days, and for that we thank our presenters and their sponsoring companies for helping us pull it all together.
But what is Sprinkler Madness without some healthy competition, right? Remember that pop-a-shot competition we mentioned earlier? The big winner of the littlest basketball game was Brian Victor from VSC. There were also some March Madness-related competitions. Attendees were randomly assigned a team upon arrival — whoever’s team recorded the highest and lowest scores of the first round of the tournament, won! Rafal Kulczynski from Davis-Ulmer Fire Protection won the “high” (courtesy of Alabama), while Macin Mazurek from Standard Fire and Kevin Haigh from Wayman Fire Protection split the winnings for the “low” scorer, since both VCU and Oral Roberts scored only 51 points in round one. Then, of course, there’s the big one — the March Madness Bracket Challenge. After a wild Men’s tournament, thanks to his prescient choice of giving UConn the big win, Sirina Fire’s Scott Schecter took first place with 52 bracket points, Kevin Haigh from Wayman Fire Protection, was right on his heels in second place with 51 points, and Billy Phair from W & M Fire Protection Services and his 49 points took third.
The two days were as successful as we could’ve hoped for and we’re glad attendees found Sprinkler Madness not only a good time, but time well spent. Again, this was only possible through the support of our sponsors — AGF Manufacturing, Viking, Zurn, ASC Engineered Solutions, Reliable Automatic Sprinkler, Victaulic, SPP Pumps, Tornatech, Core & Main, and Ferguson Fire & Fabrication — as well as our great group of attendees. We’re already counting down to next year: the 2024 March Madness Tournament kicks off its first round on March 21st – 22nd, with Sprinkler Madness 2024 right along with it! See you then!
