3 Sports you Missed, Vol. 8

ANOTHER discus world record falls in a field in a tiny town in Oklahoma. Plus, national championships for Youngstown State, Western Michigan, and a last-to-first volleyball title.

There were two NCAA championships on the line this weekend, and they went to Western Michigan and Youngstown State. That’s basically a perfect Read Rodge weekend. (Surprisingly, WMU won on ice and not YSU’s Penguins, who took the bowling national championship.)

Now that college hoops is over, I’m moving 3 Sports You Missed back to Mondays. I’m hoping to take the next few weeks to figure out the perfect balance for this newsletter, my Youtube channel, and my freelancing (I know I’ve said this at least 11 times!), but I still expect to put out 3 Sports You Missed every Monday and 1-2 other newsletters per week.

Onto the sports!

🎵 OOOOOOOOOOOOklahoma where the discus comes flying down the plaaaaaaain 🎵

I’d like to tell you about a place called Throw Town.

Throw Town is a track and field venue in Ramona, Oklahoma, population 535. Really, it’s just a field venue, specializing in throwing events like discus, javelin, hammer, and shot put. And really… it’s just a field. If someone throws the javelin far enough, they might hit a hay bale.

Ever been to Oklahoma? I have! It’s windy!¹ Kinda famous for being windy, actually. There’s a well-known song in a terrible musical and two blockbuster movies about how windy it is there… and that’s surprisingly relevant here. While a strong tailwind invalidates sprinting records, it doesn’t matter for throwing records. The wind won’t really blow a shot put that much… but the discus? Get some wind under that metal frisbee and it’ll fly.

And so, Throw Town has become Record City. Every year, the best throwers in the world crowd into this tiny town. Sunday, Lithuania’s Mykolas Alekna broke his own discus world record, which he set last year at Throw Town. He threw hurling the discus a stunning 75.56 meters, the first man ever to hit 75². This wasn’t televised or anything—all you’re getting is a 13-second youtube video shot by one of the dozens of attendees, the pops of wind blowing up the iPhone mic.

75.56 is a monster number. East Germany’s Jürgen Schult had a 74.08 meter throw in 1986, and the record stayed there for 38 years, and was the oldest world record on the books before Alekna broke it last year. At last year’s Olympics, Rojé Stona set the new Olympic record with a 70.00 meter throw, with Alekna taking silver at 69.97, about 18 feet short of his new world record.

They’re rewriting the record books in Throw Town. Australia’s Matthew Denny had a 74.78 meter throw this year, and still finished second to Alekna. This is what the all-time leaderboard looks like now:

(And yes, #7 is Mykolas’ dad!)

Also in Ramona this weekend, back-to-back Olympic gold medalist Valerie Allman demolished her own American record with a 73.52-meter throw. That’s the eighth-best throw of all time and the longest since 1989. The seven throws above her are by East Germans and Czechs in the 1980s, because state-sponsored doping is still a bigger advantage than any wind, but STILL. And Sam Mattis came about two inches away from breaking the men’s American record which has stood since 1983—71.27 instead of 71.32.

Is it a little cheap to set records on the set of the movies Twister and Twisters? No! I reject your discus discourse!

Going to Oklahoma isn’t cheating! Anybody can do it! Hell, I’ve done it, although I didn’t set any discus records there!³ Hold the Home Run Derby in Kathmandu for all I care! Human achievement aided by the environment counts as human achievement and if you’ve got a problem with it, get your ass to Throw Town!

All I know is this: I gotta go to next year’s event in Ramona.

You LOVB to see it!

Remember March, when I gleefully wrote about how college basketball allowed every team in the sport to still have a shot heading into the postseason, even the worst teams in the smallest leagues? It turns out that I was lying—the college basketball championship is, in fact, reserved for the best teams in the biggest leagues. I should have been hyping you up about League One Volleyball.

LOVB is one of two startup women’s volleyball leagues to launch since last year⁴. The league made some really solid moves: They got 11 of 14 players from last year’s silver medal-winning Team USA Olympic roster and some of the best graduating college players from the 2024 season, they put teams in volleyball hotspots like Austin, Madison, and Omaha, and they made sure recent college stars were sorted to the teams in their former college towns. They also made some moves I actually hate, like asking you to pronounce it “love” when it clearly says LOVB. (Makes a bit more sense when you see the logo, but still.)

They also made one move I didn’t like at first but have totally come around on. LOVB decided that all six of its teams would qualify for the LOVB finals, which were played at a neutral site in Louisville. This was a totally unnecessary move, because by the end of the season, it was clear the best team was Atlanta (13-3 with league MVP Kelsey Cook) and who the worst teams were (Austin and Omaha, which tied for last place at 5-13.)

But when the playoffs started, the cellar-dwellers started climbing. Austin and Omaha both won their quarterfinals, then both pulled reverse sweeps in the semis after falling behind 2-0 in best-of-5 set matches. Here’s Austin coming out of nowhere to knock off Atlanta, the best team in the league.

Austin swept Omaha in the championship match pretty convincingly, with former Texas superstar Madisen Skinner earning the league’s first finals MVP. (See what I mean about how it was a good idea to put recent college stars on the team in their college town?)

I’m sure LOVB will consider changing the format after their runaway best team got knocked off by a team with a 27.7 percent winning percentage… BUT I MUST URGE THEM TO KEEP IT. We’ve got enough rational sports out there! Thanks to LOVB and the Austin and Omaha squads for providing some chaos.

Do ‘Zoo Believe in Miracles?

College hockey is one of those sports where you look up and some school you’ve never thought about happens to be a dominant powerhouse. North Dakota has eight national championships. Minnesota-Duluth went back-to-back a couple years back. Some successful teams are just names (Clarkson?) or words (Union?) that I did not associate with college sports. I didn’t even know there was a saint named Cloud, let alone a college named after him or her!

Western Michigan… is not one of those teams. I mean, they had the same near- lack of non-hockey success as those schools—the Broncos hadn’t won a national championship in any sport since winning cross country in 1965—but they also had no hockey history! (Although people in Kalamazoo told me WMU hockey games have always been way more fun than football or basketball games.) They’d never won a conference regular season title or reached the Frozen Four before this year, and had a sub-.500 record all-time when alum Paul Ferschweiler took over the program in 2021.

On Thursday, the zero-time champion Broncos won their first Frozen Four game over 10-time champions Denver, the winningest program in the sport’s history, in double OT. (They kinda dominated the whole game though… 47 shots to 22!)

That brought up 5-time champion Boston University, which wasn’t as close. The Broncos won 5-2 and cut down the hockey nets, which I didn’t realize they did:

If I know one thing about Kalamazoo, it’s that a lot of high-quality beers were consumed after this. The most likely city in America to celebrate a sports championship with stouts and double IPAs.

Some sports you won’t miss

Trying to make this an even more helpful guide, putting previews and TV times in here. If you’d prefer me to do it in table form let me know.

Game 3 of the G-League Finals: Winner-take all between the Stockton Kings and Osceola Magic… THAT’S RIGHT, MAC MCCLUNG’S TEAM. 8 p.m. tonight (April 14) on ESPN2 to see whether Mac can win another G-League title to go along with all of his dunk contest trophies.

NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships: Thursday and Saturday (April 17/19) in Fort Worth. Semis on Thursday, championship on Friday. There are a couple of 2024 Olympic gold medalists competing—Jordan Chiles for UCLA and Jade Carey for Oregon State (even though the Beavs didn’t qualify as a team.) But LSU are the defending champions and LSU’s Haleigh Bryant is the reigning all-around champion. Semis broadcast on ESPN2 and streaming on ESPN Plus Thursday, championship broadcast on ABC and streaming on ESPN Plus 4 p.m. Saturday.

NCAA Men’s Gymnastics Championships: Friday and Saturday (April 18/19) in Ann Arbor, which is convenient has as they have 2024 Olympic bronze medalists Fred Richard and Paul Juda. But Stanford has won five straight championships with their Olympic teammate Asher Hong. Semis streaming on ESPN Plus on Friday, championship broadcast on ESPN2 (and streaming on plus) 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

(ed note: I initially said that Michigan had won back-to-back championships, which was wrong—they’re back-to-back runners-up!)

ISU World Team Trophy in Figure Skating: Thursday through Saturday (April 17-19) in Tokyo. Remember the figure skating world championships a few weeks ago that handed out individual titles to the best skaters in the world? This is the team event. Team USA should be the favorites after winning three of four gold medals in Boston, but Japan racked up a bunch of silvers and bronzes and quite frankly I’m not 1000 percent sure how the team scoring works so maybe that’s better. All events streaming on Peacock. The last two events (the pairs and women’s free skates) are actually on at a reasonable time in America, 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.

1. PSA: Please use the word “winding” to refer to something with a lot of curves. In decades of writing stuff, “windy” vs. “windy” is the homonym which still trips me up the most because it’s sometimes so tough to distinguish with context clues. A lot of windy (strong gusts) roads are windy (lots of curves!) You may continue referring to the West Indies cricket team as “the Windies.”

2. The women’s record is actually 76.8 meters—the women’s discus is lighter.

3. I actually recently realized I drove through Ramona heading north out of Tulsa in 2023. Didn’t notice it! It’s tiny! .

4. It’s a bit hard to keep track of all the new women’s sports leagues now that investors realized there’s money in it, so, a quick summary: LOVB touted investments from Candace Parker and Kevin Durant at launch, while the rival Pro Volleyball Federation led with failing UAB football coach Trent Dilfer. Don’t worry, I’ll still cover PVF’s championship next month… and I’ll let you know if Doug Gottlieb launches any women’s sports leagues.