OT - Most Memorable Sporting Event that YOU PLAYED IN

Adult beer league hockey, semi finals. We're down 2 points with 5 minutes left in the 3rd. I score on a diving attempt. My hip starts hurting like hell from the dive, but I decide to keep playing. I score again to tie with the extra man. We go into OT, about 5 minutes in, I intercept a pass and go on a break away. I deke out the goalie, top shelf a backhand shot, just in time for a defender to take out my legs from behind sending me into the boards, on my hip that was already hurt. 

I ended up sitting out the championship game, but we blew out the other team and won. 

I still have a numb spot on that side on my hip from the nerve damage from that game, but it was worth it.

uhhhhhhh

Ran (JV heats) in a high school track meet my freshman year against our school's biggest rival, a team we hadn't beaten in anyone's memory. We had a guy who ended up winning two NCs at Grand Valley, a couple distance guys that ran in college, it was basically the year when every truly great runner our school ever had just happened to be on the team and getting ready to graduate at the same time.

We won by (I think) a point or two. It was an epic meet that came down to the last two races, which happened a few times that season. It had started to rain, and as we got on the buses in full-on celebration mode, the other team's coach was lining his guys up on the track to run a full punishment workout. Felt real good.

Later that season, we got another huge win against a school we also never beat by using every trick at our disposal to make sure our star sprinter got enough rest between all of his races. Right before the 200m, our coach had every warm body he could find run the 800m as slowly as possible (something I was particularly good at). There were shotput guys basically walking the thing. The other coach was not pleased.

We won by a half a point.

I've had few memorable moments, but anytime you came back to coach and he was smiling, that was a good day.

I went to Freestyle Nationals in Iowa and finished top 15 out of 130 guys. i was eliminated by the 3rd place guy and the eventual Champ who just destroyed me. That was a new experience. My football team lost in the playoffs to MCC to miss out on The Silverdome. We held Bobby Morse to 52 yards on 25 carries but let him run back a punt to cost us the game. He went on to run back a punt for MSU to beat Michigan and also ran back a punt for the Saints to beat the Lions. I really don't like Bobby all that much.

Intramural B League Final 2009 and 2011. Won both! I went to a tiny private high school (talking like 100 students total in grades 9-12) and a small private undergrad - around 2k students. I did get to participate in a home run derby at the Toledo Mud Hens' stadium in high school. Didn't hit any out, but it was cool.

Longtime hockey player. Once I intercepted a pass to earn a last second breakaway in a tournament game. The game was tied. I scored far-side top shelf. The clock read 00:01. The game wasn't tied anymore.

watching the Tigers play a night game-- and then being on that same field the next day to play in the State Championship Game at Tiger Stadium was really, really special.

Everyone took it serious. Only 5th graders played, so we all got in trouble for pushing out younger kids. Yes, I take huge pride in that game.

My basketball team was playing at county wide Holiday Tournament.  In the second game of the tournamnet, we were down by 20 going into the 4th quarter to a team that was very equal to us.  I was the leading scorer on our team, and I had put up a big, fat goose-egg for points. 

I made a layup on one of our first possesions and thought maybe I would get it going.  I missed my next three point attempt, and with 6:30 left we were still down by 20.  A bleak situation indeed.

Still down by 16 with a little over 5 minutes to go, I proceeded to go on a personal 14-0 run. I made three 3 pointers on 4 possesions, with the 2nd one being an "and one."  I then scored another basket and two free throws.  With a minute left, a teammate scored to tie up the game.  I made another basket and two free throws in the final minute to win the game.  We had 21 points going into the 4th quarter and scored 31 in the final frame for a stunning victory.  

The best part though was the newspaper dubbing me the "White Mamba" the next day.  The nickname did not stick.  

Once in high school hockey I stopped a penalty shot by faking a poke check, the look on that  shooter's face as he lost the puck and it dribbled into the corner - on a penalty shot! - was priceless.

As a freshman in high school playing Bantam AA outside Chicago we played Phil Kessel's Madison Capitals. They dominated everyone. Beat our big rival about 10-1 the night  before  they played us. With 3 minutes left in the game I had shut them out. It was 0-0. They had not lost or tied a game all year. By the end of the game we were outshot about 52-3. We were dead. With 3 minutes left they get a penalty shot - anyone on the ice can take it. Their coach  threw Kessel out on the ice. He burned me, bad. Madison ended up getting 2 more goals right away, and we lost 3-0. I think it was their smallest margin of victory on the year.

CCRB - cool story bro - I got beat playing basketball by a team of football players. As our 3rd biggest guy I got to guard their 3rd biggest - who was TE Mike Massey - about 6'6" 250. I'm 5'11" and 200ish. Did OK I think, were it not our 3rd game on the court, we may have beaten  them.

I started out by hitting a drive on the first hole that the starter said " I've been a member here for 34 years and have never seen a ball hit that far".  I then hit one 4 feet away and proceeded to miss the birdie putt. From there it was all downhill as I hit sand on 13 of the next 17 holes.  I was out of it by the first 18 but came back with a respectable 71 on the second 18 of the day.

High school district final soccer game. Crazy winds and the field was a mud pit from penalty spot to penalty spot. We had given up maybe 12 goals on the entire year, ranked 7th in the state. We were so much better than this team it was ridiculous, but the conditions made it pretty even. We end up down two or three playing against the wind. One of the most furious comebacks in the last ten minutes of the game to go from down three to tied. I was a center back and trash talking was my thing, so got into the head of a guy that had two of their goals. Ends up going scoreless in OT. Had the pk for the win and missed when the wind pushed the ball right before I kicked. Kid I had flustered blew the ball over the net and gave us the win. Absolutely wild game to be a part of

Senior year vs Holt in basketball.

They were really good that year and we were just a KVC team.

I went baseline and scored the winning bucket with a second left...

And the FUCKING ref called charging on me for hitting a guy that was standing underneath the basket (a call that cannot be made as you cannot take a charge underneath the basket).

Regardless, it was a very exciting game and I'll always remember it fondly (if with a touch of bitterness).

In 5th grade gym class, my dodge ball team won a game. That was pretty cool.

After redshirting my first year in college. I didn't make the travel team in our first game my second year in campus. I strongly considered quitting football that weak. School was hard enough without practice and meetings. Plus my ego was hurt after being the man on my high school team. After the '96 Circle City Classic, the coaches felt that the team needed a shake up. I was now traveling. We headed down to Sam Houston State the next week. On Flushbowl, (kickoff) my first collegiate play, our kicker shanked the kickoff to an up back. (earlier in the game, the kicker hurt his knee on a field goal attempt with no contact, he just was trying to play through the pain) The pressure from the left side of the kickoff team pushed the up back, who clearly wasn't used to carrying the ball, my way. For some inexplicable reason he ran to his left without looking at what was coming. I ear holed him. (just the term, not literally) I hit him so hard I didn't even have the opportunity to wrap him up, he went down hard. The whole stadium ooh'd and ahh'd. Throughout that game I had several more moments on flush bowl that seemed to at least inspire my coaches. At half time our linebackers coach was giving us the hype speech to get us ready to go back on the field, and mentioned my name to the team as inspiration to the level of effort everyone should be giving. It was that day, I went from being an obscure redshirt freshman not good enough to travel, to a contributor!

In 2000, I was in medical school at Vanderbilt, and Edge Shave Gel came in to sponsor a campus-wide 4-on-4 flag football tournament sometime during the spring. Three of my classmates and myself entered this thing one sunny Saturday morning.

Background: one of my teammates had been a walk-on DB at Stanford, the other 3 of us had all played high school football at decent to very good programs. Also, we had been playing a Saturday morning pickup touch football game for several years now, so we were practiced.

The games were played on a shortened field and they had some ridiculous PAT system where you could go for 2 in the traditional way or throw a football at an inflatable shaving cream can from like 20 yards for 3(!). Needless to say, we went for 3 every time and converted most of them. Anyway, we proceeded to dispatch several fraternity teams, then a couple more club/IM teams, eventually making it to the semifinals against a team made up of varsity basketball players. These guys were athletic and much taller than we were, but somehow we scraped out a close come-from-behind victory. The finals were against a team made of varsity football players (DB's and RB's, I believe--still, D1 players). Again, close, hard-fought game that we ended up winning!

Four dorky medical students won the open all-campus flag football tournament! We were invited to travel to Atlanta to play in the SEC championship for this contest a week or 2 later but declined because we had exams. I still consider this to be my greatest athletic accomplishment, even though I won 3 team state championships in high school (1 football, 2 lacrosse). 

Beating all those Scholly players at country day for the football state title in front of 8-10,000 raucous fans barely filling half the lower bowl at Ford field

Worked at Kraft headquarters in Glenview right out of B School in 1985. Our Ad agency put on a client boon doggle function with a big softball game of client versus agency. They hired celebrities too make it incredibly cool. Mr Cub, Earnie Banks is pitching and the bases are loaded with our team down. The CEO calls the young snot nosed kid to come in to pinch hit. Nancy Faust is playing the organ. I step up to a rendition of Hail to the Victors and am so jacked up that I cork screw myself into the dirt missing badly on the first pitch. Ernie is spendingmost of the time eyeing the hot ladies on our team and throws a meatball right down the middle. I didn't miss and it was like Robert Redford in The Natural. I just floated around the bases and had Ernie autograph the ball. He was a great guy.

We also had William "the refridgerator" Perry as a spokesperson for Mac and Cheese that year. I'm think he was more popular than Jesus in Chicago during that time.

1993 Class B HS basketball regional final. Our team finished the regular season a mediocre 11-9 but managed to catch fire winning first @ #6 (18-2) Battle Creak Pennfield by 20 in our district opener, followed by Hillsdale and Albion. We then beat a favored Coloma team. In the regional final we were up against state class B #2 ranked Comstock (23-1) and the state's #4 ranked player Chris Crawford. He went on to have a great career at Marquette then played a handful of years for the Atlanta Hawks before knee surgeries ended his career.

He was 6'9 and 250lbs, I was 6'4 165lbs and our starting centerr as I was the tallest kid in our high school. I held him to 10 points below his average and we knocked them off in their own backyard in Kalamazoo. We then lost to a very good Muskegon Heights team by 3 in the state semis. My teammate had 38 points in that game, a legendary effort in our HS history.

I've never watched the tape of the Muskegon Heights game. I'm the same way with Michigan games. If we lose, I won't watch one second of it.

 

 

Played in, and won, the provincial (Ontario) baseball championships when I was younger but the most memorable (because it happened later) was scoring the winning goal against our playoff rival to beat them for the first time (played the same team every year in the first round)

I actually have a few but the ones that really stick out are the one's in which I wish I had another chance at a play and would have done it differently. 

Played high school football at Grosse Ile, graduated in 2012. (small island downriver Michigan). We played in the Huron league and were division 3.

My favorite event (which if you continue reading has some UM ties to it) was when we played our Rival riverview in 2010 @ home. UM's Llyod Carr was in attendance! He was either a teacher or principal at riverview in his past. We had a very large crowd for our games at about 5k. We lead the entire game but riverview always seemed to not go down. We ran a play action waggle and I was the backside x receiver. Our coach always got pissed when the ball was thrown my way in practice because I usually was not even apart of the check down. I sprung open and my qb threw it about 40yds across his body caught it at the five and scored shortly afterwards. We play for the "Colvin cup" and was the first one to get the trophy after the game and run it into our endzone, was an awesome moment.

I definitely wasn't a world beater but I was pretty athletic, had a knack to make some plays and get open (I started at WR), we ran a triple option spread offense out of the gun and threw the ball about 40-45% of our plays.

We hadn't made the playoffs since 2004 and for a stretch of 2+ years my freshman and the year before that we had a losing streak of 22 games. My favorite play was when we met up with a team in our league (Carleton Airport). We were both undefeated and tied atop the league standings. They received the ball first and took up half of the first quarter driving down to go up 7-0. We get the ball about to go three and out, I took a slant route 80 yards for a touchdown (in the endzone where their student section was) and got to hold up the "shhhhhhhhhh" to them. One guy flicked me off while another was swearing at me. Lol.

St. Thomas vs. St. Gerard in a battle of Catholic Youth League titans. I split time at fullback (took turns shuttling in plays) and was a backup linebacker. I also played a little special teams. We fell behind at halftime due to two problems. First, we were flagged for about a dozen off-sides penalties on offense. Our coach asked the ref who was jumping and he said the fullback. To this day I contend it was the other half of my platoon. The real problem was the center was late snapping the ball, but I digress. So my coach gets on the bus at halftime (we didn't have "locker rooms" at the field) and really lets me and the other fullback have it. It's hard getting yelled at for something that wasn't your fault. I've tried to remember that lesson during my own youth coaching career. Our other problem was that our starting cornerback kept getting beat deep on passing plays. It was so bad, they pulled him at halftime and replaced him with me. I protested to the coach, "but coach, I've never played cornerback." He responded by telling me to keep everything in front of me and I should be OK.

Fast forward to the second half. We fix the snapping issues and start rolling on offense. They even call a pass play for me where I fake a dive and head out to the flat. I caught the ball and gained about 5 yards. That's the only time I ever touched the ball on offense in 2 years. Coach Terres used his fullbacks as blockers. The guy I had to block in that game was St. Gerard's all everything middle-linebacker, Steve Kutas. He was about 6' 1" in 8th grader and swatted me away like a fly. My goal was just to disrupt his forward progress a little.

But the real memorable moments came in the second half on defense. St. Gerard's called a bootleg and had the QB roll out to my side of the field. He was staring right at me and threw a pass right at me. I caught the ball for an interception. Later in the half, they tried the same play, except this time the QB tried to run. Someone must've stripped the ball from behind as he fumbled and the ball came right at me. I recorded my second takeaway of the day and we went ahead and scored on the next drive. We ended up winning that game by a TD.

For me it was running in the 2013 Boston Marathon which was the year of the bombings. Luckily I had finished 45 minutes prior so I was not directly impacted. But between the awesomeness of the race itself followed by the  aftermath it was pretty memorable. 

 

 

Two best memories for me, both having to do with being pretty fast when I was a young fella:

1.  Junior year, walk off steal of home in 7th inning of HS baseball game against Northmont.  Gapper for a triple.  On the next pitch, the kid doesn't stretch, pitches from the windup.  If he does that again, adios.  I got a good lead, he glanced at me but wasn't concerned, as soon as he started the windup, took off.  Pitch was in the dirt.  By the time the catcher corraled it and got to me, it was too late.  The buckle on catcher's shin guard took a nice 1" x 5" chunk out of my right shin, though.   I LOVE it when someone asks me where that scar came from.

2.  Couldn't play baseball senior year because of my shoulder.  Ran track instead.  In a 4x100 relay, leadoff leg, I'm in Lane 1, and soon to be Buckeye Keith Byers was in Lane 2.  Closed up the stagger on him by the handoff.

This goes back to when little league baseball was played with wooden bats...so lets just throw that out there.  I was chosen to play on my towns all star team that, at the end of every year, played a grudge match against a neighboring towns all stars. 

Pitching was always really good in these games and we went to the bottom of the 7th inning tied 3-3.  I went to the plate with 2 outs and the bases empty.  As the fastest little shit on the team, and a flamethrower on the bump, I was given the bunt sign.  I laid down a beauty and beat it out at first.  Next pitch, I stole second.  Next pitch the coach gave me the steal sign again, which, inappropriate as it may have been, was a subtle junk-adjustment just after all his other silly ass fake traffic cop looking signs.  I took off for third and wiped out the third basemen by sliding into his feet causing the ball to sail down the left field line and the chunky third basemen to pancake me.  I slithered my way out from under him ran home in time to score the winner.  Team went ape-shit.

Best part was loading up the whole team in my dads chevy pickup and heading to the DQ for a no price limit ice cream bonanza.  Best tasting peanut-buster parfait ever.

Also won a couple individual state speed skating championships up in Petoskey which was cool but it didn't top the baseball story.

 

High School Baseball: on my 16th birthday against cross county rival. 2 run double to tie game and a hell of a sliding/diving catch (if I do say so myself) to preserve tie. Game winning squeeze bunt in extras. Following football season I was stretchered off with neck injury that still gives me issues time to time (but thankfully wasn't too severe in grand scheme of things). Basically never really played team sports again other than rec-league softball and basketball.

we won 20-0.  I scored two touchdowns.  Before the brown jug.  Not that I'm bitter about that or anything. . . 

I pulled off some pretty sweet dunks in pool basketball. That's about the end of my notable athletic accomplishments.

I wasn't good enough to make the highschool hoops team, but joined a Friday night community center league in my Mid-Michigan hometown. 

 

My team was full of future computer programmers who quite often would dribble the ball of their own feet or pass it to the opposing team when zone defnese was employed.

 

One night (in my 3 quarters of play - before I was benched) I hit every shot I took no matter where I was on the court. I tried Bill Laimbeer style threes (swish) - Kareem hook shots (swish). I am 5' 9" BTW. Everything fell. It was amazing. My brother was in the crowd and after the game told me that two townies supporting the opposing team said they would beat me up if I hit another shot. I was that good...

 

However, for some reason, despite scoring 27 points over three quarters, the team captain benched me to let another guy see some action. Our team failed to score in the fourth quarter and we lost by double digits.

 

But it was my one and only shining moment in sports history.

This isn't a story of triumph, but I thought it might be worth sharing. A while ago I worked for a year as a research assistant for one of the clinical departments at UMich Hospital. In the summer there was something called the Hospital Olympics. (I don't think they do this any more.) One of the events was (not surprisingly) the tug-of-war. It was oddly organized and there were no weight limits or rules on gender balance. We had a couple of resident physicians who were big, strong dudes. I believe one had played in the CFL. Anyway, we got to the quarter finals pretty easily and were matched up against ... housekeeping. It was probably the biggest department in the hospital and we (eight guys of varying size, two women) found ourselves across the sand pit from ten enormous $%^&ers. It was over in a couple of seconds. Very sad.

My junior year in HS, we were traveling to our bitter rivals (at the time) Milan. They had just opened a brand new school complete with a very nice pool.

On paper, the teams were quite evenly matched. It was going to be a tough fight, and proved to be for over half the meet.

I had been training very hard that year but wasn't seeing results in competition. It changed that night.

Near the halfway point in the meet, we swim the 200 Free Relay. On the B relay, I swim my fastest time and, with great times from the others, we beat their B relay, giving us a slight points lead. By the second-to-last event, 100 Breaststroke, we were again behind. But this event was my primary, and I was fired up.

My biggest rival in the event was Milan's best breaststroker. His times were about a second and a half faster than mine. He was in lane 4, I in lane 3, and our best in lane 5. I took it out at the same pace as the other two; we all touched the wall at 50 yards about the same. That next length, me and my teammate pushed a bit ahead of the Milan guy. While pulling out on that last turn, I see me and my teammate neck and neck while our opponent was almost a body-length behind. We blast toward the finish, teammate winning and myself taking second with a huge PR. Nothing beats the rush I felt when I finished at that wall for second, and saw my time on the board.

Those two events were upsets and provided the winning margin in the meet. I was named MVP for the meet and swam great the rest of the season.  

I'm from Fostoria, OH and we used to have a very good football team.

1989 - Beat in the first round of the playoffs by Akron Buchtel led by... Ricky Powers.

1990 - Beat in the State Finals by Cleveland St. Joesph 21-14. We were ranked #1 all year.  They returned a punt for a TD and fumble in the endzone doomed us.  In the 4th quarter with a few minutes left they held us on 4th and 1 on the 1.  No Grbac or Howard on the team. That was 2 years prior.  They did have a QB named Tony Miller I think who went on to be Marquette's starting Point Guard in college.  I played sparingly.

1991 - Were beat in state semi-finals by eventual champion St. Marys Memorial 21-14. I was a starter by then. Sad we didn't make it make it back to the finals.

1992 they finally won it all.  But I was in college.

Fostoria was part of the Great Lakes League and Temperance Bedford was a member.  They always were tough as nails in wrestling.  At the GLL Championship, I was the only scorer for the team.  We were beat 70-2.  I tied my oppenent.  Ref would never give me an escape off the bottom even though I would stand up consistently and turn and face my opponenet.  Never been more frustrated in a match.  Even the Bedford fans around my parents were saying I had an escape 2 or 3x.  Oh well.  Leaves a big memory being the only one that got points.  That's the worse drubbing we had all year.

I played lacrosse in college (club level, at a small D-3 in other sports school), was a defensive midfielder.  Freshman year we were playing our cross-city rival, biggest regular season game of the year.  I spent pretty much the entire game (or as much of it as my coach would allow a not-very-good freshman to play) harrying their middies, and in the fourth quarter got a clean run at a guy on the sideline waiting for a skip pass.  Landed a clean check right as he caught the ball, fully decleated him and knocked him about five feet out of bounds, picked up the ball, fed it upfield to start an odd man rush that ended in a goal (we ended up winning by 3 or 4 so it wasn't a game winner or anything, but still was exciting for me).  Ended up getting the mud covered defense game ball (which I still have, dried mud and all, in a glass case at home more than a decade later), only game ball I got during my career.