Four Sports You Missed, Vol. 5

I write this newsletter for weeks like this. To make sure you see THE BEST ENDING OF A HOCKEY MATCH I HAVE EVER SEEN and THE BEST ENDING OF A WRESTLING MATCH I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Normally, I give you Three Sports You Missed.

This week, I am bringing you an unprecedented FOUR SPORTS YOU MISSED.

That’s partly to apologize for publishing this on Thursday instead of Monday. But really it’s because THERE WERE SO MANY GOOD SPORTS THINGS, and I don’t want you to miss any of them.

Onto the Sports:

Meet the clutchest woman alive

Kirsten Simms is the bane of the entire state of Ohio’s existence. She has now scored two national championship-winning goals against the Ohio State Buckeyes, but even that undersells what Simms did in Sunday’s title game, an act of

Wisconsin was far and away the best team in women’s college hockey this year, leading the nation in both scoring offense (5.39 goals per game, nobody else scored more than 4) and scoring defense (1.17 goals per game.) But they found themselves trailing in the closing moments of the national title game to OSU. But with 20 seconds left, an Ohio State skater covered the puck in the crease, giving Wisconsin a game-tying penalty shot opportunity. It’s a scenario so dramatic they might put it in a sports movie. Come to think of it, I think it’s literally the exact same scenario as the ending of The Mighty Ducks.

As the commentators debated which Wisconsin player should take the shot, cameras caught Badgers head coach Mark Johnson asking the same question to his team: “Who wants it?” A pause. “Who wants it?” A hand shot up. It was Simms, who scored the only goal in Wisconsin’s 1-0 win over OSU in the 2023 national championship game.

What Simms did on the penalty shot is absolutely sick. I should not be allowed to post it on Substack. It is violence. It is filth. It is an entire lifetime of planning out the exact shot you’d do in the closing moments of the national championship game, then actually having that scenario present itself, and then actually doing it.

IT’S TOO GOOD! I’M GONNA POST IT AGAIN!

Badger Extra noted that Simms had a penalty shot against Thiele two seasons ago and had almost the exact run-up… but finished on the backhand side, which perhaps explains why Thiele bit so hard before the final deke.

That sent the game to overtime. Three minutes in, Thiele saved a shot that rebounded directly to Simms. Game over, season over, Wisconsin wins:

You’ve really gotta watch the whole post-goal broadcast. ESPN’s broadcasters smartly shut up and just let the whole scene speak for itself. Some Wisconsin fans were almost too shocked to celebrate, Ohio State’s entire team spontaneously collapsed on the ice, heaving and crying for minutes after the final goal buzzer. (To be clear: Totally understandable!)

That’s why I do this newsletter—in case somebody out there didn’t see this. Sports Thing of the Year, easy.

Pro wrestling couldn’t script this

At the 2021 Olympics, Gable Steveson seized gold in the final moments of the championship match, recording a takedown in the final second against Georgia’s Geno Petriashvili. Four years later, Steveson was the wrong end of a takedown in the final seconds of a championship match, losing to Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson in the heavyweight title match at the NCAA championships, the biggest upset in college wrestling history.

Steveson was riding a 70-match win streak for Minnesota dating back to 2019. (BEFORE THE PANDEMIC! Which started FIVE YEARS AGO!) And that doesn’t include his gold medal at the 2021 Olympics. He’d wrestled Hendrickson twice before, with both matches ending via technical fall, wrestling’s equivalent of the mercy rule—a 17-2 win at the 2021 national championship and a 12-0 win at the 2023 US Open.

He hadn’t really been in a close match all year—18-0, with 17 wins coming by pin, tech fall, or major decision. But he was only up by two in the closing seconds against Hendrickson, and Hendrickson got a championship-winning takedown.

It’s a little bit baffling that Steveson was even wrestling in college, as he embarked on multiple pro sports careers after winning his second national championship in 2022. After going undefeated as a sophomore, junior, and senior and winning that thrilling medal in Tokyo, Steveson signed with WWE. But he flamed out at WWE, due to his poor in-ring skills, a near-total lack of charisma, and fans booing him out of every ring he stepped in. (Before you start feeling bad for him… now’s when I mention Steveson’s 2019 arrest for sexual assault, with the prosecutor heavily implying Steveson only avoided charges due to a now-closed loophole about intoxicated victims.) WWE cut him in 2024, just after the window to qualify for the Paris Olympics had closed. So Steveson tried football, signing with the Buffalo Bills at defensive tackle. But he hadn’t played the sport in years, and they cut him after a few preseason snaps. Out of pro options, Steveson came back to college wrestling to use his last year of eligibility as a 24-year old grad student, likely expecting to coast to a title.

Hendrickson seemed to have fewer options for his professional future. He wrestled for four years at Air Force, graduating last spring, and still has to serve a 5-year military commitment at some point. However, after winning the 2023 U23 world championship, Hendrickson was accepted to the Air Force’s World Class Athlete program, which will allow him to defer his service until after the 2028 Olympics. Hendrickson was able to convince his superiors that the best way for him to improve his talents would be using his fifth year of college eligibility at a program besides Air Force—so far as anybody can tell, the only instance of an academy graduate using a fifth athletic season at another school. “I was able to bargain with them, like, ‘Hey, if you guys let me do this, it’s gonna pay dividends. I’m gonna get to wrestle in college, I’m gonna get to face the best guys in college,” Hendrickson said. “Might get to face an Olympic champion,” he said, referring to Steveson.

That plan worked out pretty well. Now it’s Hendrickson people are talking about as a future WWE star—although I’m not sure how the Department of Defense feels about that. If Steveson really is out of pro options and committing to wrestling again, these two will probably face off a few times over the next few years while chasing the 2028 Olympic heavyweight spot. Maybe Hendrickson will show this wasn’t an upset.

A Swiss miss

I feel a little bit bad posting about the worst shot thrown in a matchup between the two best curling teams in the world. But man, you’ve gotta hear Confused Canadian Curling Commentators (CCCC) after this momentum-shifting miss in the championship match of the World Women’s Curling Championship between teams that had combined to win the last 11 world championships:

Oh dear, what have you done!

I don’t even know what they were trying there.

That’s the weirdest thing ever like.

Wow.

That’s a gift.

(Also, I love that Canadian SportsCentre is out there producing 11-minute highlight reels with detailed analysis of virtually every shot in curling matches. Bring this back for our sports, American SportsCenter!)

Canada’s Rachel Homan is basically a perfect curler right now. She entered this tournament as the defending world champion and her team has won over 90 percent of their games in the 2024 and 2025 seasons. In the Scotties Tournament of Hearts last month, Homan went undefeated for the second straight year and shot 100 percent in the tournament final, the first player ever to do so.

But the woman throwing that rock is 6-time world champion Alina Pätz. Pätz skipped her own team to win the 2015 world championship, but competition was so tough in Swiss curling trials that she joined forces with Silvana Tirinzoni after the 2018 Olympics, forming a superteam that won four straight world championships. Then they started running into Homan. The Swiss were up 5-4 on the Canadians in last year’s World Championship gold medal match, only for Homan to score three in the ninth end to prevent the 5-peat. And in this year’s round robin, Switzerland went 11-1—the one loss coming to Homan, in an extra end after the score was tied in regulation.

The Swiss were again leading Pätz missed. Before long, the score had flipped from 3-2 Switzerland to 7-3 Canada. Playing against perfection can cause the near-perfect to screw up in strange ways.

Mr. 4th Place finally gets third

Back when we were doing our daily Olympics posts, I wrote an entry about Akani Simbine, the South African sprinter who has been split-seconds away from medaling at a major event for almost a decade: Simbine .03 seconds off the podium in the 100m dash at the Rio Olympics, .04 seconds off the podium in Tokyo, .01 seconds off the podium in Paris. Simbine finished either fourth or fifth at six of the seven Olympics or World Championships between 2016 and 2024. (He false-started in the other.) I felt immense pathos for an athlete who had no hardware to show for a remarkably consistent career near the top of the world’s most compelling race, one of the all-time greatest sprinters with no medal to show for it. (Ok, a couple of relay medals, but still.)

Well, great news: OUR GUY GOT ON THE PODIUM.

But in the World Indoor Championships, Simbine finally got his first global medal, finishing third in the 60m behind Great Britain’s Jeremiah Azu and Australia’s Lachlan Kennedy. (Gotta feel for Puerto Rico’s Eloy Benitez, who had the best time in heats and could’ve won PR’s first-ever medal at the event… he’s the guy tumbling to the ground in the thumbnail.)

Indoor sprints are just 60 meters, because there aren’t a lot of buildings where you can hold a 100m indoor race. (The races typically end with the competitors slowing down by jogging up a banked track and BONKing into a big padded wall.) The 60m attracts a different type of sprinter than the 100m, because it’s so heavily dependent on starting fast.

Simbine seems to have believed that he was one of those athletes who wouldn’t cross over: “Everybody knows my running style is after 60 meters, that’s when I take control,” he said, according to Let’s Run. “Now in this element, it’s so different because I have to get going in the beginning.” But IDK man–kinda seems like you’re pretty good at this! Simbine says he doesn’t want the accomplishment to define his career. I get it! A decade of greatness is more interesting than these six seconds. But I’m just glad our man finally got a medal!

Sports You Won’t Miss

World Figure Skating Championships: In Boston! Already underway, with American Alysa Liu leading in the women’s event after the short program! Ends Sunday, March 30th. Streaming on Peacock 🦚🦚🦚

Bandy World Championships: 11-a-side hockey on a soccer field-sized rink. Already underway, ends Saturday, March 29th. Held in Sweden. Streaming on a sport-specific website you have to pay for 👎👎👎

Division I men’s swimming and diving championships: Already underway, ends Saturday, March 29th. Held in Federal Way, Washington. Streaming on ESPN+ 🐭🐭🐭

Division II basketball championships: women’s finals on Friday, March 28th in Pittsburgh, men’s finals on Saturday, March 29th in Evansville. Streaming on ESPN+ 🐭🐭🐭 (Edit: Looks like the men’s championship game is on CBS 👁️👁️👁️, thanks to Joshua for the heads up)

World Men’s Curling Championships: Saturday, March 29th through April 6th. Streaming on a curling-specific website you have to pay for 👎👎👎