The NCAA Championship game was a real nail-biter, not just for Duke University, but also Nick Ehlers, a dairy farmer in Theresa, Wisconsin.
Ehlers knew he had a good chance of winning the Grand Prize in the first-ever Bovamine Brackets Challenge sponsored by Nutrition Physiology Company (NPC). In fact, his bracket actually tied for the win, but he lost the tiebreaker (all Bovamine Brackets contestants were required to guess the total points scored in the final game Ehlers was off by eight points, the Grand Prize winner by only five).
On the bright side, Ehlers ended up being a double winner in the Brackets Challenge, not only taking home the Runner Up prize of $4,000 in cash but also winning one of the $500 weekly prizes for correctly picking the Elite Eight back in March.
What will Ehlers do with his winnings? "I just got married in October, and we bought an old farmhouse that we've started remodeling. I'll put the money toward that," says Ehlers. "In fact, I think my wife Angela is even more excited about that than I am," he laughed.
Grand Prize winner was Jim Pforter, a cow and calf producer in DeRuyter, New York. Going into the championship game, Pforter said he knew he had a good chance to win, which made him too nervous to watch the game in real time. Instead, Pforter silenced his cell phone and went to bed, confident that his children and grandchildren would be glued to their television sets and that their inevitable voicemails would reveal his fate. He awoke at 3 a.m. to a congratulatory video message from his daughter and granddaughter.
Grand Prize in the Bovamine Brackets Challenge was a choice of either a one-year truck lease or a travel voucher, each worth $7,500. Because Pforter's daughter and family live far away in Arizona, Pforter had already decided that, should he win, he and his wife Gail would choose the travel voucher prize and bring along their other three children plus their families for a long-awaited family reunion in Arizona.
Both winners said they heard about the Bovamine Brackets Challenge from one of their dairy trade publications and decided to enter on a whim.
Ehlers says he doesn't follow basketball that closely until March comes around, but then he tries to watch all of the games. "I love March Madness. Every year I fill out a bracket with my Mom and my nephew, or with friends, just for fun." says Ehlers. This year, Ehlers spotted the Bovamine Brackets Challenge and thought, why not? The rest is history.
The Bovamine Brackets Challenge is sponsored by Nutrition Physiology Company (NPC), maker of Bovamine, Bovamine Defend and Bovamine Dairy, the most widely used and most thoroughly researched probiotics in the industry. NPC also makes PoultriMax, a probiotic formula targeted to the poultry industry.
4.14.2015