5 Sports Things You Missed This Weekend

Featuring artistic swimming, the Razorback Republic's dominant NCAA track performance, and Florida's stranglehold on the hockey world

I really need to work on my framing here, because I went to the Ireland-Canada cricket match on Friday and said to someone “I like bringing attention to weird sports.” He said… “cricket’s not a weird sport!”

He’s right! It’s the second-most popular sport in the world! It’s only about half as weird as football. (Try explaining the intentional grounding rule without sounding like the Pepe Sylvia scene.)

So if you can find a better way to explain this thing, let me know. And also go ahead and check out the article I wrote for Extra Points about Jacksonville State starting a bowling team and winning the NCAA championship in Year 1. And now read about some extremely normal sports from this weekend!

The Sooners go Boomer again

This was a down year for Oklahoma softball. After going 61-1 last year, the Sooners went 59-7, their worst record since 2017. They lost the Big 12 regular season title to Texas, and were ranked second headed into the NCAA Tournament. They needed extra innings in a decisive third game against Florida to make it to the Women’s College World Series finals.

Didn’t matter. The Sooners went Boomer to sweep the Longhorns and win their fourth-straight national title.

Oklahoma’s senior class went 235-15, with four NCAA Tournament losses and four NCAA tournament championships. They are, for my money, the most enjoyable college sports team to watch, because softball is generally an enjoyable sport and Oklahoma’s strategy for victory is “blast a bunch of dingers.” Here’s their walk-off to beat the Gators:

Some would argue that Oklahoma gets an unfair advantage because the WCWS is in Oklahoma City every year, but I think you could put them on the moon and they’d still win—and besides, where is the Nebraska baseball dynasty?

The Biggest Olympic Roster Announcement Omission Of The Weekend

Bill May was set to be the first man ever to compete at the Olympics in artistic swimming—they changed the name from “synchronized” in 2017—but when Team USA announced their Paris roster on Saturday, he wasn’t included.

May is 45 years old and has been competing since the 1990s in a sport which repeatedly rejected him. Artistic swimming has historically been all-female, leading May to quit the sport in 2004 due to the lack of opportunities. He returned to competition in 2015 when men were first allowed at the World Championships, winning gold and silver medals in mixed duet events that specifically required male swimmers. Later, the traditional 8-woman squads in larger team events were allowed to include two men, May helped Team USA win silver and bronze in the team acrobatic event at the 2023 and 2024 World Championships. In 2022, World Aquatics announced men would be allowed on teams at the Paris Olympics, and May seemed like he’d finally get his chance after he helped Team USA qualify a team for the first time since 2008. But he didn’t make the final roster. In fact, none of the ten teams in this year’s Olympic competition will have men on their rosters, despite the policy change.

The Olympic competition is a combination of three swims—technical, free, and acrobatic—with no room to sub out athletes. At this year’s World Champs, May was on the team which won bronze in the acrobatic event, but was not on the USA teams which finished third and fourth in the free and technical swims, and Team USA needed swimmers who could perform in all three, and I guess May wasn’t one of them. Being 45 years old is probably not ideal in a sport demanding ridiculous levels of flexibility.

I got to interview May in April at the Team USA Media Summit here in New York. It’s an event where the various Olympic sports federations send their best talkers to run an interview gauntlet. While the vast majority of the athletes saw the event as an obligation they had to push through, May was glowing, ear-to-ear smiling the whole time. He recalled the exact moment he got the news men would be in the Olympics—it was December 17th at 9:42 p.m., and he was in the kitchen. “When your greatest dream happens,” May said. “You never forget.”

Most stories about gender equality in sports are, rightfully, about women breaking into men’s spaces. May, on the other hand, was literally a man pushing for a spot on an otherwise entirely female roster. But I think defining certain sports as strictly male or strictly female limits everybody’s potential by dictating which activities are acceptable for which genders. May argues that men’s participation in artistic swimming enhances the sport he loves, growing its athlete base and pushing the limits of what can be accomplished in the pool. “Males in the sport add a different style, always complimenting the female athletes,” May said. “We grow the sport together.”

May said he knew that men would someday be included in artistic swimming, but had long assumed it would happen too late for him to compete. He was sort of right. Perhaps if that call had come at 9:42 p.m. on December 17th in 2004 or 2014, a younger May would’ve been spry enough to help win Team USA compete for medals. He won’t get to live his dream—but he helped make somebody else’s possible.

All Hail the Speedy Pigs

The NCAA track and field championships were this weekend, and if what you need this Monday is a motivational video to convince you to get through the week, watch Virginia’s Shane Cohen surging from last to first in the final moments of the men’s 800, or New Mexico’s Habtom Samuel getting tripped up with two laps to go in the men’s 10,000, getting up, and winning anyway.

But if what you want is sheer, stunning speed, check out the Arkansas Razorbacks, who won the overall national championship thanks to complete dominance by their 400 meters squad. Just based on the 400 and 4x400 events, Arkansas earned 39 points in the team championship, which would’ve been enough to finish fourth without entering anybody in any other events. But Arkansas also had points finishes in six other events to take the overall title.

In the individual 400 meters, the Razorbacks became the first team ever to finish 1-2-3-4. We’re calling it a “Super Sweep”—it had never really come up before. Nikysha Price set the all-time NCAA record, and was followed by her teammates Kaylyn Brown, Amber Anning, and Rosey Effiong.

And when you take the top four spots in the 400 meters… well, you can guess what happened in the 4x400 meter relay:

Not only did they break their own NCAA record by four seconds, Arkansas would have won last year’s World Championships by three seconds. This is one of the fastest 4x400 relays of all time, forcing World Athletics to put “Arkansas” up on their record list next to the United States and the Soviet Union. This team would be good enough to win Olympic gold if Arkansas was a country, but since Price is Jamaican and Anning is British, they don’t get to compete in Paris. Clearly, Arkansas must secede and create a completely unviable, but extremely fast nation. Long live the Razorback Republic and its speedy hogs!

Florida, hockey capital of the world

I wanted to continue my tradition of writing about non-NHL hockey in every single one of these entries, so congratulations to the Florida Everblades on winning their third-straight ECHL champions, scoring an overtime goal over the Kansas City Mavericks to become the first team ever to pull the Kelly Cup three-peat. Here’s a bunch of people on the Gulf Coast going nuts for minor league hockey:

The Everblades are the second-tier minor league affiliate of the Panthers, who are in the Stanley Cup finals for the second year in a row and currently leading the Oilers 1-0. The concept of a minor-league dynasty is a funny one. You’d think there’d be some sort of connection between the Panthers’ and Everblades’ success, but they actually switched affiliations from Nashville just two years ago and none of the current Panthers have played for the Everblades. There’s no explanation here besides Floridian-based teams being innately great at hockey.

A Futile Miracle

This year I’ve fallen in love with the NCAA baseball tournament—when you combine aluminum bats and shaky fielding with a format that requires so much baseball in so little time that teams are forced to put back-of-the-roster pitchers on the mound in season-defining moments, you get magic. The tournament peaked on Sunday with a 13-inning thriller between Clemson and Florida that the Tigers needed to win to keep their season going. Cam Cannarella saved the season in the ninth inning with a game-tying three-run homer, then saved the season again in the 12th inning with the catch of the year—an over-the-shoulder bobbling miracle while in a dead sprint up Clemson’s sloped warning track.

Things really got special in the 13th. A Clemson pitcher who hadn’t hit all season, inexplicably substituted as DH in the 13th inning of a must-win game, got hit by a pitch. He was substituted for a pinch runner who immediately got picked off, followed by a home run which gave Clemson the lead, followed by the umpires’ decision to eject two coaches because the home run hitter spiked his bat. (A day later, everybody remains confused.)

And then Florida won the damn thing in the bottom half of the inning, rendering all the heroics and intrigue for naught. It was a beautiful waste of time, as baseball should be.