The Ladies… Pick Their Favourite Sports Moments of 2008

2008 was a big year for sport.

We watched Michael Phelps win eight gold medals in Beijing, Usain Bolt smile and dance his way to world records like some sort of superhuman, a Superbowl that gave us one of the biggest upsets of recent memory, the best Wimbledon final of all time (yeah, I said it!), and Spain win Euro.

Yes, this year definitely gave Ladies… lots to whine/gloat/gasp/talk about, but aren’t you curious…

What were our absolute favourite sports moments of 2008?

Mistress Christina

Despite 2008 being the year of the Olympics and packed with other awesome sports moments like the Patriots getting pwnd in the Super Bowl, my fave sports moment of 2008 came only a few weeks ago. Now, I’m not going to pretend like I’m not a major homer. My best moments always involve the team I love and usually seeing them in person. On December 18th, 2008 I was sitting in the Dean Dome surrounded by my fellow Tar Heel basketball fans screaming, shouting, chanting, and most importantly counting down the number of points until Tyler Hansbrough broke Phil Fords all time UNC scoring record. When he did, the entire game was stopped and the AD Dick Badour came out and gave Tyler the game ball and Tyler gave an adorably awkward wave to the crowd. When the game was over, Tyler had scored 20 points (11 more than he needed to break the record) and had given a heartfelt and slightly choked up speech that nearly had me in tears. This is the first sports team that I have truely LOVED. This is the first player who I have totally obsessed over, read his stat sheets, followed his progress, and plotted how to make him the father of my children. To be there on the day that a 30 year old record fell, at a school known to produce NBA superstars, was probably one the best sports memories of my life. In the years to come, if Tyler’s record ever gets broken, I can look back and say: I was there the day that record first got set.

Games Mistress

2008 was a fairly quiet year for most of my sports teams (the not yet completed college football season excepted), but I still had a hard time picking my favorite moment. I spent some time considering various Olympics related moments (the 4×100 swim relay, the Australian diver who ruined the Chinese sweep, Usain Bolt), and some of those big OU football wins, but I kept coming back to early February and the David Tyree Super Bowl catch. Not only was it an unbelievable play in one of the most entertaining Super Bowls of my lifetime, but absolutely everyone I was watching the game with, were they a Giants, Pats, or neutral fan was on their feet screaming by the end of it. So it’s the combination of amazing athletic feat with awesome fan experience that makes the Tyree catch my favorite 2008 moment

Miss Minda

What was my favorite sports moment of 2008? I really thought about the Royals’ opening day, or their home opener, or a David DeJesus walkoff home run in July. Those were all awesome memories for me. But my favorite was actually just a AAA game, where the Omaha Royals and Oklahoma RedHawks had to play in a stadium with no electricity because of a horrendous storm in Omaha the day before. It was just simple, stripped-down baseball. The game was a glorious distraction from the gloomy aftermath of the storm, and it gave everyone the opportunity to focus on baseball instead of all the noise and filler that games usually have. It didn’t hurt that my ORoyals won! Here’s a photo gallery of the destruction from the storm at the stadium.

The ORoyals watching a storm that ripped their town to shreds.

Lady Andrea

My favorite sports moment of ’08 had to be Rick Ankiel’s game when he threw out two guys (COUNT ‘EM, TWO!) at third base from the warning track. Fan-effing-tastic. Such a good story and such an amazing piece of fielding. It gives me chills. Video can be seen here.

Click the pic to watch the vid

SA

I know this was a great year in sports and I should have many favorite moments during this year. But while my teams were a pile of suck this past year (sigh) there was one moment that shone like a light in a sea of my personal sports crapiness. I’m talking about Rafa Nadal’s victory over Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Greatest match of all time, I know I know, etc. All I care is that my favorite tennis player won the best tournament (or at least the one the media hypes up the most) in tennis. That’s not saying there wasn’t other sports that I didn’t enjoy. The Patriots-Giants Superbowl was the first one in a while that I actually sat through and watched in it’s entirety live. Rocco and Tiger made me care about golf more than my standard one weekend a year. I became a baseball fan and watched every game of the World Series. Okay, I watched a majority of the innings. And my fave sport college football had it’s usual topsy-turvy year. But honestly 2008 is all about Rafa for me. And just so you can remember…

Metschick

My favorite sports moment of 2008 was easy: the end of the MLB season. Finally, the misery of a second collapse in a row was over. We had some good times in ’08, but the Mets’ bitter finish made it hard to even remember what those good times were. I look forward to a clean slate in ’09, and hope that better times are on their way…

La M. Alana

My favorite moment is brief indeed. And representative of, I think, the mood throughout the year of 2008 – that, though things were bad, they could get better; that, sometimes, we can overcome. As a wise and very, very impassioned man put it in spring of this year: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

Cinnamon Girl

My favorite sports moment of 2008 would have to be watching the Olympics with my kids, sharing that experience with them of seeing such wonderful athleticism on a global stage and having them see how all that hard work paid off for those men and women, whether they won or lost. It was a way of teaching them about being good sports, determination, and setting aside differences to celebrate greatness.

The Dame of Extra Time

My moment has to be John Terry’s hilariously missed penalty kick at last season’s Champion’s League Final. It was spectacular. Partially because when he stepped up to the ball everyone was certain he was going to put it in, but mostly because it wasn’t just a ‘miss’ — he slipped. Well, first he slipped, then he missed. Or did he miss then slip? Half a year on and I’m still not 100% sure which one it was. And who can forget the sitting on the grass looking pathetic with his head in between his knees (a moment which spawned tons of naughty and equally hilarious photoshopping)? Or him crying about it for the rest of the broadcast which, which would’ve made any grown woman feel sympathy for the man but only made me laugh harder? Hell, I’m laughing right now just thinking about it, it was that awesome. Watching any Chelsea man miss the clinching penalty would’ve made that night complete for me, but watching John Terry do it in the manner that he did made my year.