3 Sports You Missed, Vol. 12
The funniest goal possible decided the Beach Soccer World Cup, another Team USA baton handoff disaster, and the most impressive streak in college sports
One thing I have realized in the last couple of weeks is that many aspects of my life were built on load-bearing Bad Sports Fandoms.
For example, my wife has rarely seen me howling or slamming tables during key moments of playoff games, because I met her when I was 24 and my two favorite teams, the Knicks and the Jets, would not play a single postseason game in the first seven years we were together. Now the Knicks are going on a deep playoff run, and she’s learning that she’s married to a guy who says stuff that would get posters banned from message boards.
During the course of my NFL-writing career, I could safely focus on covering the league at large, because the Jets were rarely playing in important games. And I could spend large swaths of time during the NBA postseason learning about other sports and covering them.
But Monday night, I skipped Long Beach State’s victory in the NCAA men’s volleyball championship to watch the Knicks take a 3-1 lead on the Celtics. This postseason run is all I can think about, and I am running out of space in my brain for the rest of the sports world and the rest of my life. Who knew?
Here are 3 Sports You Missed (and also 3 Sports I Probably Missed Because The Knicks Were On)
The Sand of God
OK, I’m going to tell you that an event exists called the Beach Soccer World Cup. Now, you’re going to close your eyes and think: What is the absolute silliest way for someone to score in a sport called “beach soccer” as opposed to regular soccer?
OK, now open your eyes, and watch the decisive goal from the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Final between Brazil (makes sense!) and Belarus1 (WHAT?!?!):
That’s right. With 90 seconds left in a tied game in the Beach Soccer World Cup final, a flimsy shot went from an easy save to a game-winning goal after deflecting off a mini-dune directly in front of the keeper. Maradona scored with the Hand of God, Brazil won the Beach Soccer World Cup with the Sand of God.
Even in the world of beach soccer, this is particularly flukey2. The sport is designed to be fun to watch—lots of keepy-uppies because you can’t dribble much on sand, lots of bicycle kicks because it doesn’t hurt as bad to fall on your neck and head area when the ground is soft and sandy. Most shots along the ground are duds, because the ball generally dies on impact with the sand. It’s entertaining enough that you can imagine the sport one day having the same legitimacy as beach volleyball… until you see the biggest goal in the biggest stage decided by sand assist.
It’s the seventh beach soccer World Cup win for Brazil, because duh. The goalscorer here is Rodrigo, who won the Golden Ball for the tournament and was the 2023 Beach Soccer player of the year. The goalkeeper, Mikhail Avgustov, was named the best goalie in the tournament, but if I were him I would’ve skipped the post-game awards ceremony and refused to touch sand for the rest of my life.
Red, White, and Blown Handoffs
Team USA simply probably shouldn’t have even accepted an invitation to a track-and-field event specifically based around relay events. Don’t even pick up the phone, let it go to voicemail. Would Shaq agree to compete in a free throw shooting contest?
When you put four champion-level American sprinters on the track together, catastrophe often follows. They crash into each other, they leave their lanes, and they generally act like the baton is coated in 1000-degree radioactive lava grease. And at the World Relays in China… it happened again.
In the prelims of the mixed 4x100, Jada Mowatt couldn’t get the baton to Kendal Williams, with Mowatt stabbing the air above Williams’ hand for a few strides before clumsily fumbling the stick. The Americans actually weren’t DQ’ed, and were allowed to retrieve the baton and finish the race, but finished a solid 20 seconds behind any other teams.
Again: This was a prelim! No need to set a world record here! They only needed to finish top-2 in a 5-team heat to make the finals. Just take it easy and make sure you qualify! You’re the fastest team there! Just get the baton around the track and you’re probably good!
And in the women’s 4x100 relay prelims, Kayla White literally had to grab the wrist of TeeTee Terry with her off-hand and position it over the baton, and then make the handoff.
All around, it was a rough championship for Team USA. The only Team USA gold came in the mixed 4x400—always easier to make handoffs in the longer races, since they’re done at slower speeds. In the three 4x100 races, Team USA got just a single silver medal. Our guy Akani Simbine had a killer anchor leg to win the men’s 4x100 for South Africa, beating the Americans at the line by .05 seconds, and the women’s 4x100 team finished in fourth place behind Great Britain, Spain, and Jamaica.
The good news is this is a non-Olympic year, and this event is much less important than the World Championships. (In fact, it serves as a qualifier for Worlds.) But in the only team-oriented aspect of track, Team USA often loses to squads that are slower on paper due to a lack of teamwork, chemistry, and practice reps. An event like the World Relays seems like a great opportunity to get some reps in and build, and it doesn’t seem like they did that.
I’m not a full-time track expert, so maybe I sound like the guy screaming HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO KICK A FIELD GOAL when one of the world’s best kickers misses a 55-yarder. But clearly I’m not alone here!
The Stanford Streak Survives
On Saturday night, Stanford came back from an early deficit to beat USC in the women’s water polo national championship:
The championship preserves one of the most unbelievable streaks in college sports: Stanford has now won an NCAA championship in something in 49 consecutive seasons. 3They’ll have chances to add a second title with men’s tennis and women’s golf in coming weeks.
The streak lives, but it’s been getting dicey. Stanford hasn’t won a championship in a fall or winter sport since 2021, so they’ve been waiting til mid-May every year to win a title alive. And another streak of Stanford all-sport dominance recently ended: Stanford won the Director’s Cup, awarded to the school with the most success across all sports, for 25 straight years, but lost to Texas in 2021, and is looking at a fourth second-place finish in five years.4
I’ll be keeping an eye out all next year to see how Stanford pushes the streak to 50. My money’s on men’s gymnastics!
Some Sports You Won’t Miss
Giro D’Italia: The first Grand tour of the men’s cycling season is underway in… Albania, surprisingly, considering the name. I think they’re gonna get to Italy soon, though. Streaming on Max every morning for the next few weeks, and sheesh I am seriously struggling to keep up with the sheer number of streaming platforms I need to check to write this roundup every week.
NCAA Softball Championship: The Read Rodge subscriber chat was filled with chatter about the many, many conference tournaments last week, but now we’ve reached the actual NCAA Tournament. They go from 64 to 16 this week, 16 to 8 next week, and then the Women’s College World Series is in two weeks.
NCAA Tennis championships: The final rounds of both the men’s and women’s tournaments are being held side-by-side this weekend in Waco. The women’s quarters are Thursday, the men’s quarters are Friday, both semis are Saturday, and both championships on Sunday. All streaming on ESPN+. This is a team event, the singles championships already happened.
Eurovision Song Contest: The one time per year that music is sports. The second round of semifinals are today, the finals are Saturday, all on Peacock. (Yes, the music competition has semis and a finals.)
NCAA women’s golf championships: Like I said, another chance for Stanford to get a championship on the board, as they’re the defending champs and ranked #1. This runs Friday-Wednesday with a somewhat convoluted format, using a stroke play tournament to whittle the field from 30 to 8 teams, then switching to match play for the quarters, semis, and finals, and there’s also an individual championship mixed in. All on the Golf Channel, per Ben. S. in rhe comments!
Belarus is banned from most international sports right now because of their role in the invasion of Ukraine, but apparently not by FIFA. (I, uh, should have looked more closely into Belarus’ geopolitics before putting on the Belarus gear given to me by my roommates in the media housing at the 2016 Olympics.) FIFA has, however, banned Russia, which won the 2021 Beach Soccer World Cup.
At least from what I can tell watching highlights—I couldn’t find the games on TV!
Stanford had already won titles in artistic swimming and sailing this year, but those aren’t NCAA events.)
UNC is in first place right now, and should hold on even with Stanford’s championship—their women’s lacrosse team are the title favorites.
The NCAA tennis championships are actually great viewing these days and did you know that there is a 64 team bracket challenge similar to the more
popular one they do for hoops?
My favorite sports thing from last week was Very Important Softball All The Time (and my least favorite was the rain everywhere, boooo).
Something that would be in contention for favorite thing if I'd been able to see a bit more of it: the US had their most successful results at a major international rhythmic gymnastics competition in a while. Rin Keys was 2nd in individual all-around, ball, and clubs, and Megan Chu was 3rd in hoop. The group was 3rd in 5 ribbons and 2nd in 3 balls + 2 hoops. A lot of folks weren't at this World Challenge Cup, so this isn't a "look the US is great now!!" thing, but it is promising.