Whats your crowning athletic achievement?

Dennis_DeYoung said:

Tequilla said:

Gladstone said:

IMA Champs 2x

Team GOAT 4lyfe

come at me @Tequilla

Alright @Gladstone ... prepare to be disappointed ...

At 8 or 9 got to the State semi-finals in a free throw shooting contest ... won one of the round by going 22 of 25. When I lost I lost by 1 with 19 of 25 ... it was up in Mount Vernon at the high school with the backboard full of crossbars and shit that looked like spider webs to me. If I recall right the final would have been down at the Seattle Center Coliseum (what it was at the time).

In the 3rd and 4th grade, I was playing on teams about 2 years older than I was at the time ...

In my last year of minors (9 or 10 years old), hit something close to .700 and struck out once the entire season. Next year was drafted to the majors and basically missed the year when my coach broke my hand with an intentional pitch ... never played baseball after that.

As a whole, a lot of things happened in life around 11-12 years that got me out of playing competitive sports for a while ... life happens I guess. In hindsight, I have a lot of respect for parents that prioritize putting their kids in positions to pursue their dreams in sports.

I didn't win an IMA title in hoops at UW ... lots of bad luck late in tournaments as if I remember right my teams lost in the semi's or quarter's 3-4 straight tournaments on either buzzer beaters or less than a basket. Had one guy hit a 30 foot fade away falling out of bounds over 2 of us to win a game in 2OT ... that came after a guy that had no shot of hitting a 3 banked in one from the top of the key at the end of regulation over me after somehow deciding that he was going to upfake me when catching the ball with maybe 2 seconds on the clock ... only an idiot would have actually done the move that he did there ... just got lucky. Had another where we were killing a team in the 1st half before one of our guys tore out his ACL and our minds went to shit and ended up losing by a bucket. Another we had a ref call an intentional foul on us in the last minute of the game when trying to commit a foul that ended up getting them the extra free throws necessary to win the game by 1 (I ended up hitting a half court shot at the buzzer while trying to draw a foul to get a 4 point play to tie). There was another one we lost in the semi's where I'm pretty sure I had something like 35 points in the game and for whatever reason couldn't get someone to throw me the ball down the stretch with the lead to go to the line ... the guy that we kept throwing the ball to kept bricking free throws and eventually lost on a shot at the buzzer ... to say I was steaming after that game would be an understatement. I think we had another year where we were in good shape before I pulled my groin going into the tournament and turned into a shell of myself and we got destroyed when we went up against a good team because I was our primary scorer ... I probably averaged over 20 points per game on each of those teams.

For @Dennis_DeYoung the top IMA stories (non-intramural championship edition) I really have besides wearing Tank Johnson's foot across my throat and living to tell about it would be that on average I would play 4-5 days a week down there for 3-4 hours a day and win over 90% of the games per week consistently. I've played with, against, and beat then-current or future NBA players, college players, and overseas players. I'm still happy at the fact that I can go to the IMA and play with guys that I play with on a weekly basis and still beat the young kids. What I probably miss most about not being in my early 20s playing down there was that I used to purposely hit game winners from about 25-30 feet out on 1 on 3 or 4 to just fuck with people ... the other one that I would regularly use to end games was wing 3's off the glass ... it's a great feeling to have the confidence to know that you can essentially say what you're going to do, have everybody know what you are going to do, and still be able to do it anyway.

One of my first experiences at TCU playing basketball was playing against 3 members of the TCU football team and lighting each up. It was amusing to watch the 1st guy get yelled at by the other 2 before talking back to them to take their best shot ... then lighting the next up ... and then lighting the last one up. Ended up winning 2 titles at TCU in hoops ... my first year down there the MBA team ended up winning the open men's title and then the second year winning the co-ed championship with a lot of the intramural officials I worked with. What's amusing about that and probably fitting for most of my athletic life is the "missed opportunities" in that I actually never played in either of the title games. The first title was played a day after my last class for Spring Break and I had already booked a flight back to Seattle for Spring Break ... although we would have never got to the title game if I didn't put together a small offensive spurt down the stretch of the semifinal game to get us into the title. The second title I severely sprained my ankle prior to the tournament (which knocked out the MBA men's team from having a realistic shot at the title) so instead we picked up a replacement for me on the co-ed team and I ended up "coaching" that team. I still have a good laugh with my buddy from that team that actually coaches girls high school hoops in Texas (for anybody that pays attention to that, last year's #1 HS player in the country Lauren Cox was coached by him - she now plays at Baylor) because in the semi-finals I basically yo-yo'ed the minutes and manipulated the situation to get the best players from the other team into foul trouble and eventually out of the game at the expense of his minutes ... he was pissed at me for a bit on that one but also readily admits we would have never won if I didn't do that. Then in the title game, we were getting destroyed by a tall female post player (our girls were smaller) and at half I switched my buddy onto him to shut her down and he did and we won. Same story for @Dennis_DeYoung at TCU in that I regularly won about 90% of the pickup games down there.

Now, as I get older, I'm far less competitive. Play a lot more golf now and looking for the elusive par or better round ... lowest round so far has been a 77. My goal is to eventually get to a single digit handicap. I don't play as much basketball as I did when I was younger because after 30+ years the stress on the ankles and knees just isn't as realistic for as much as I would like to play. I've switched more to playing soccer and have backstopped my teams to a handful of league titles. Early in a session I'm normally not too stressed out about things but when we get around the halfway mark I will start looking at the standings and if we have a chance to win the league the competitive juices come back out.

If I have a regret, it's what happened in baseball ... particularly knowing the successes that my brothers had playing. On one hand, they loved baseball more than I did so that probably explains a lot given that my love was always basketball. But I also know that if events would have turned out differently I probably could have played in college pretty easily ...

And for anybody that things that I consider any of these things as crowning athletic achievements ... get a life. I'm well aware of my lot in life from an athletic standpoint ... particularly from a basketball standpoint. It's why I probably get bent out of shape sometimes when talking about our OL recruiting because I know as well as anybody how important it is to have the physical gifts required to play at elite levels. You can have all the skill, understanding, etc. in the world ... but if you don't have the athletic abilities to play at a certain level, you've got no shot.

How much can I love Tequilla??? None more.

Greatest post in the history of this shit barn.