What sports are all about Part 1... being a a great teammate.

I saw something cool over the weekend and it made me think of something even equally as cool that I had seen a few weeks ago, and one of them had a local bend to it, so I thought I'd bring that to the show as well. Let's start with that one, it's the golf. And I know Shane Ryan is a friend of this program, he's a great golf writer, he's written some books. Shoot, I won't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but if you Google Shane Ryan Ryder Cup book, his book is about the most recent Ryder Cup that was up in Wisconsin that I think was pushed off by the pandemic. But it's really more about the history of the modern era of the Ryder Cup, and how bad the Europeans used to get creamed in it, and then how badly the Europeans have beaten the Americans, especially given how good the Americans should be based on talent alone, and what the secret formula was for Europe a lot of the time, and how some American captains have embraced certain tactics and succeeded, and others who arrogantly think were just better than the Europeans have failed miserably.

So it's a great book. But a couple weeks ago he stumbled across a story about two golfers at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. And let me just give you the lead to the story, and then you should go check it out yourself, it's on Golf Digest. It says, on April 26th at the Carolina Country Club in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Macy K. Aycock and Sarah Marshall cried together in a bathroom.

It was a cold, rainy morning. They had just made the turn, meaning they had played the first nine, were taking a break, they were about to play the back nine, and the fatigue from three days of play at the USA South Conference Championship had finally taken its toll. When they overheard, another player called them embarrassing, something cracked. This is rock bottom, they thought.

How can it get worse? Not only did Macy K. Aycock and Sarah Marshall help Meredith field a team, they helped field a number of teams that made up the conference championship. Here's what I mean by this. Meredith College had a golf team, right? I won't give you the history of Meredith Athletics, but let's just say it's not a college that is like an athletic powerhouse. Our friend Dennis Cox has coached lacrosse over there.

Athletics are, I'm sure there are teams that have had success, but I think they see athletics as part of a well-rounded college life and something they like to provide, but again, it's not the driving force behind Meredith College. So it probably wasn't a shock when the golf team lost some players due to, you know, maybe a transfer or somebody dropping off, but all of a sudden, they were left with being short a few players. So they sent out an all call saying, hey, would anybody like to come play golf?

We'll provide you some shoes and maybe some clubs and some chance to practice. And these two players, Macy K. Aycock and Sarah Marshall came together so that, came to the team so that Meredith could field a team. You can't show up at a tournament and only have like two golfers.

I think you have to have at least four. And then same thing, they were at the conference championship. The conference needs at least a minimum number of teams to hold a tournament where they could say, okay, the winner of our conference championship has beaten these other teams and now they automatically qualify for the national tournament.

So these girls played on this team that allowed the team to compete in the conference tournament and that allowed the conference tournament to be an official qualifier for the national tournament. The eye popping stat here is that one girl, I don't know if this is the exact tournament that she scored in, is the one that she was crying at for the lead of the story, but one of the girls shot a 276. I don't know how much you play golf, Victoria, and it probably wouldn't be legal for me in competition to stand beside you and coach every one of your shots, but like there's a decent chance that we can go out on a golf course and I could walk you through breaking a 250 with just a little bit of talking through it, right? Like don't take any chances, don't do anything risky, make the safest possible shot at all time, because like we're aiming to make a 10 on every hole. And we can get lucky and maybe make an 8 and then we've got more strokes to play with. If we get a 12 or a 15 on some hole, we might even be able to survive shooting a 20 on a hole.

And again, now part of this is also there's plenty of people who look at that number and be like, that's ridiculous. Well, when you and I play, we also probably like don't play balls that end up in divots or like if it's lying an inch over the out of bounds, we just like are like, I'm not playing that. Whereas these girls have to literally play every shot, ball as it lies, you know, every rule, whatever kind of a shirt, be a one shot at 276, a one round that combined for a 434. But again, in the, this is what sports is all about category, it didn't matter what their score was. They were out there much like many people who are good at golf have gone out there and had a tough round and had to persevere anyway. These girls were persevering. They were improving. They were having a good time. And more importantly, they were helping a bigger cause. Their willingness to put themselves out there to embarrass themselves, even at times to be, and the story does a great job describing it. Many people from other teams were applauding them because they knew what they were doing. They said, we know you're not great, but you're giving it your best so that your teammates can participate. And now again, even more than your teammates, other teams can now have a competition so that we can send somebody to the finals. So I thought about those girls in that cool story.

Again, you should go check it out. Google Shane Ryan, Merritt College Golf, it'll pop up, it's on Golf Digest. A similar thing came up this weekend when Belgium shot put and hammer thrower champion, Jolien Bumquoz, sorry if I'm saying that wrong. Now, track and field is an interesting sport because, well, it's true in a lot of sports. In volleyball or basketball, you may get some people that are taller or shorter than others, but for the most part, everybody's got to be able to like move, so most people are pretty thick, right?

Football or golf, it's a little bit different, right? Some positions move a lot more than others. Some positions in football, it's in your best interest to be large, right? You don't want to be moved.

You're not trying to move a lot. Traditionally, like in baseball, you know, the guy playing short is usually a little skinnier than the guy playing first base because one guy's running more than the other. So if I asked you to picture a shot putter or hammer thrower, male or female, what are you picturing, Victoria? Someone who's got some oomph to them.

Somebody who's bigger, some heft, maybe even like a bigger belly or chest because that's part of like getting that momentum, getting that behind the thing that you're throwing. So yes, as you would picture, Jolien Bumquoz looks strong, she looks like an athlete, but she looks like she is a bigger athlete because her sport is shot put and hammer throw. So it says she displayed great team spirit at the European Championships in Poland when she stepped up to run the 100 meter hurdles. What?

Wow. To save her team from getting disqualified. It was this similar situation. She agreed to compete when Belgian's two hurdlers had to pull out with injuries. You have to put field people in every event and if no Belgian athlete had competed, the whole team would have been disqualified.

So obviously we won't be able to give you the video, but there's some commentary along with it. Here's what it sounded like when Jolien Bumquoz stepped up and ran the 100 meter hurdles. Look at that one point for Belgium and their quest to stay in this division. One woman that's really going the extra mile to help her team. Jolien Maliga.

Bumquoz of Belgium there in lane two. She came seventh in the shot put yesterday and she put on her own Instagram today, hashtag this is not a joke. I am going to run the 100 meter hurdles for my team. It's all about the team boys.

Bigger than sports. It was super cool. I love that. She had a smile on her face the whole time too. Now to be fair, she got smoked. She did.

But her contribution was signing up, getting out there and honestly, there are probably, you'd like to think especially when like country pride is on the line that anybody would do this, but there's probably some people are like, no, exactly. I did not like my sport is sitting over here and throw it. This is what I practice.

This is what I'm good at. I am not doing the thing where not only running, jumping hurdles. Now to be fair, and maybe they went and assessed the athletes they had and said, who would be the best person to do this? She was so tall that she would basically jog up to a hurdle and then jump leap.

Yeah. Just sort of put one leg over and then jump from one foot to the other. I would have to do the arms and kind of like heave myself. I was wondering, there's nothing to leave. I mean, you just got, you can knock the hurdles over.

Obviously you're not going very fast. So I was wondering if she would just pick them up and just, that would be kind of funny. She just chucked them out of the way. She's like, this is what I'm good at or, or even this would be great if she picked them up and carried them. So at the end, then she just stacked them. Like, my vid's done.

Here's all the hurdles for my legs. She's like, reminder, I may have finished last running, but I'm stronger than all you girls. But yeah, it was cool. Her competitors all congratulated her when she got to the end.

She got a standing ovation. There are moments like that where you're like the biggest sports. One of the coolest things, I would say probably in my lifetime, if you're like, tell me Olympic moments you remember.

Top five for me, probably. Every now and then it'll be like, man, I remember Usain Bolt winning. But to be honest, like Usain Bolt winning in London and Usain Bolt winning in Brazil, like kind of run together for me. But the moment where, was it Linford Christie was running the 200 or the 400 and his hamstring popped and he like clearly wasn't going to win and the race was over. Like everybody, you know, the race is over in like 15 seconds.

So he's down for a little bit. He gets up and he starts hopping basically to the finish line of like a shredded hamstring. And already you're like, oh, this is a cool moment because the guy knows he's lost, but he just, he's like, he wants to finish the race.

And then out of nowhere, somehow his dad gets onto the track and runs up beside him and like helps him to the finish. And just an unbelievable moment. Or Carrie Strug in the Olympics. And the coach holding her.

Still getting gold. Like that's what sports are all about, those type moments. So shout out to Jolien Beomquo, shot putter for Belgium going above and beyond so that her team doesn't get DQ'd. Just like a shout out to Macy K. Aycock and Sarah Marshall from Meredith College right here in North Carolina out there playing some tough golf, grinding it out. For the team. So that their team could actually count as a full team and their conference could have a full USA South conference championship. So congratulations.