3 sports you missed, Vol. 7: WE GOT A CURLING SCANDAL

Plus, the worst college baseball game ever and a brother vs. brother fencing matchup.

I have emerged from my Basketball Cocoon and—CURLING SCANDAL!!! CURLING SCANDAL!!!!!

This is the good stuff. This is why you subscribe to a newsletter which promises to bring you updates from every sport on the planet. Because maybe, one day, you’ll get to read about athletes you’ve never heard of getting Big Mad about rules you don’t know.

Let’s get to the sports.

🚨🚨🚨 CURLING SCANDAL 🚨🚨🚨

The incident in question stems from the men’s World Curling Championships in Moose Jaw, one of Canada’s best-named cities. Scotland won, Team USA went 4-8 and is in legit danger of missing next year’s Olympics—but we’ll deal with all that later.

During a playoff matchup with Norway, Chinese sweeper Li Zhichao clearly tapped a moving stone with his broom. You’re not supposed to do that. His broom redirected China’s stone so it could take out two Norwegian stones.

Want a dramatic slo-mo close-up of the infraction? Here you go:

Hitting a moving rock while trying to sweep is called “burning” a stone, and every curler has accidentally done it at some point. It even happens at the Olympics sometimes! If you did this in a beer league game at your local rink, you would supposed to raise your hand, admit the error, and let the opposing team choose how to proceed.

And if this happens at the World Championships, with a spot on the semifinal on the line… you’re still expected to raise your hand, admit the error, and let the opposing team choose how to proceed. But China didn’t do that. When confronted on the ice by Norway, they simply denied the allegations. And apparently, there’s nothing you can do in curling if your opponent simply refuses to admit anything illegal happened. Pretty big loophole there! (There is an umpire at events like this, but they have no video review and tend to let curlers settle things themselves.)

China were able to score a point off this end, and eventually beat Norway 8-7 in the 11th end when the teams were tied after ten—so you can make a pretty convincing argument this incident won them the match. That pushed them through to the semifinals. They ended up in fourth place, their all-time best finish.

The curling world is apoplectic about the breach of curling etiquette. Here are some quotes from George Karrys in The Curling News:

This is beyond terrible. This is a nightmare.

This is, hands down, the worst thing I ever seen or heard of in my 42 years in this sport.

What could happen to curling, if this crap doesn’t get fixed?

The Canadian team which beat China for bronze adopted an admirable accusatory strategy. Instead of calling out the Chinese team for cheating, they just said “how the heck did those hosers make the semis, we coulda beat them drunk” and let the listeners fill in the rest:

(Canadian lead Ben) Hebert said he wasn't thinking about the incident leading into the third-place game. But he didn't mince words after completing the rout, saying the Chinese foursome was "not a real team."

"I don't know how they beat the teams that they did this week here to finish where they did," he said. "But I sure would have liked to get them in the semi. We would have been playing at three o'clock today (in the final). That's not a hard one… I (said) last night we were winning bronze. I should have had a few more beers last night, but whatever. It's all good."

Bless curling, the only sport where “I should’ve drank more, we could’ve won this game hungover” is something an elite athlete might say out loud.

This feels like an easy fix: Just put video review in! Allow the umpires to overrule egregious cheating by a team that won’t admit they cheated! The question will be whether curling is too polite to admit it needs to change anything.

Two losing streaks, one stone

Somebody had to win. Tuesday’s matchup between Lehman College and Yeshiva University had developed into a landmark moment for Sports Sickos: Lehman was on a 42-game losing streak dating back to 2023; Yeshiva was on a 99-game losing streak dating back to 2022. While the NCAA did not have records handy on the longest combined losing streak between two teams in a game, a spokesperson told NBC News “wow, those are big numbers.” In the weeks before the Clash of the Minnows, Youtubers and Tiktokers started raising awareness for the matchup. “Mark your calendars, April 8th is going to be the worst college baseball game of all time,” said one:

It feels like a fair assessment. These were the only two winless teams in Division III this year, and there’s no Division IV. They were also the only two winless teams last year. They entered the game 378th and 379th out of 379 Division III teams in ERA (Lehman at 14.93, Yeshiva at 18.83.) The Maccabees had ghastlier scorelines on their schedule, including back-to-back 36-0 and 27-0 losses to Western Connecticut State, but the Lightning¹ also had losses by scores like 20-1 and 24-2.

Their scheduling wasn’t a gimmick, as the two worst teams in the sport are maybe a mile or two apart, separated by the Harlem River: Lehman is part of the CUNY system located in the Bronx, while Yeshiva is an Orthodox Jewish school in Washington Heights. The two teams met in New Jersey at Fairleigh Dickinson’s campus (not a lot of diamonds in city limits!) and the few bleachers were packed. Lehman beat Yeshiva 7-6…

…but they weren’t just playing one game, they were playing A DOUBLEHEADER. And Yeshiva turned around and won the second game:

That means both streaks are dead. Both teams got to win the most-watched games they’ll ever play, and can now go back to losing in anonymity. I think they should keep scheduling doubleheaders against each other in future years, to avoid those streak numbers from getting out of hand.

Brother vs. Brother

My favorite part of writing this every week has been how trying to share sports that you missed has led to a slew of commenters popping in to share sports that I missed. I’m going to feature something Jessie Oehrlein wrote about two weeks ago: The NCAA épée men’s semifinal between brothers LIU’s Mohamed El-Sayed and Wayne State’s Mahmoud El-Sayed, both of whom represented Egypt at the 2024 Olympics. (Honestly, as a college sports obsessive, I’m more interested in how LIU and Wayne State wound up with elite fencers than the brother aspect.)

That’s right: TWO BROTHERS FIGHTING WITH SWORDS. There’s like 12 Shakespeare plays and multiple Game of Thrones episodes about exactly this, but unlike GOT, this actually had a good ending.

After a lifetime of training with each other, learning from one another, the brothers went point for point until they were tied at 14-14. Mohamed, who won bronze in the individual épée Egypt in Paris², won the final do-or-die point to advance to the NCAA championship, and the brothers embraced.

Mohamed went on to defeat a fencer from Harvard in the championship bout to win the NCAA championship. (Zero Ivy Leaguers won titles this year—very rare!) Mahmoud tied for bronze, since there are no third-place bouts at NCAAs. And I’ve been inspired by LIU and Wayne State to build a college fencing dynasty at a school like Illinois-Chicago or Cleveland State.

Sports you won’t miss

IIHF Women’s World Championship: (That’s ice hockey.) USA and Canada have combined to split all 23 championships. The PWHL is on a break so everybody can play in this. Starts Wednesday, April 9, through Sunday, April 20th. Held in Czechia. Broadcast on NHL Network, streaming on Fubo ❓❓❓

Men’s Frozen Four: Boston University, Denver, Penn State, and Western Michigan remain. Semis Thursday April 10, championship Saturday April 12. Held in St. Louis. Broadcast on ESPN2, streaming on ESPN+ 🐭🐭🐭

League One Volleyball Championship: The playoffs of the cool new pro volleyball league with a terrible abbreviation (sorry, I get upset I see “LOVB.”) Prelims Thursday April 10th, semis Friday April 11th, championship Sunday April 13th. All games streaming on ESPN+, broadcasts for semis and final on ESPN2. 🐭🐭🐭

NCAA Bowling Championship: Jacksonville State, Nebraska, Wichita State, and Youngstown State remain. I’m rooting for Jacksonville State because I wrote a story on them last year. Begins Friday April 11, championship Saturday April 12, in Las Vegas. Broadcast on ESPNU, streaming on ESPN+ 🐭🐭🐭

1. I’ve seen rumors that Lehman’s mascot is a Lightning Bug… but they appear to be shifting towards this anthropomorphic lightning bolt. Devastating!

2. In case you weren’t having enough trouble sorting out Mohamed El-Sayed vs. Mahmoud El-Sayed, another totally unrelated Egyptian guy named Mohamed El-Sayed won bronze at the 2020 Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling