Most shocking sports moment you've covered?

I covered a Providence College basketball game this year vs. South Florida. They had a 13-point lead with 2:55, a 9-point lead with less than a minute, and still led by 6 with 30 seconds IIRC. South Florida managed to tie the game in regulation and won 109-105 because of some boneheaded PC plays. It was the most shocking game to me because of the quality level involved.

At the high school level, I do the basketball scoreboard for the high school I graduated from. About five years ago, when they had a girls' freshman team, they got shutout 52-0.

 

UNLV football playing at Baylor on Sept. 11, 1999. Baylor was up 24-21 with five seconds left and just had to take a knee for the win. Instead, BU tried to score one more time, the ball was stripped, recovered a yard deep in the end zone by UNLV and returned 101 yards for a TD. Final: UNLV 27, Baylor 21.

 

High school football, 2006. Franklin County is 9-2 entering the game against defending Class 3-A state champ Lexington Catholic.

A year after getting blown out to this team, Franklin County plays LexCath to a 38-35 loss in the regular season. I knew the rematch in the second round of the playoffs would probably be close, but I had no idea Franklin County would be in position to win the game.

Franklin County is up 32-7 at the half. They are playing the game of their lives, while LexCath is making mistake after mistake.

Second half is a completely different story. County's QB, IIRC, threw three or four INTs in the second half that led to touchdowns. Mike Fields was at the game for the Lexington Herald Leader, and neither of us could believe what we were seeing. LexCath ties the game and we go to OT.

County scores first, but misses the two-point conversion. LexCath, for whatever reason, decided to go for two after it scored but also missed. Game goes to second OT, LexCath scores first and misses two-point conversion again.

County gets the ball, and drives inside LexCath's 5. First down, incomplete pass. Second down, incomplete pass. Third down, pass to the 2. Fourth down, receiver gets his hands on the ball before it's jarred loose by a LexCath defender. Game over. Season over.

It was the best and worst game I've ever covered. I say worst because those were some of the most painful interviews I've ever had to do, especially with County's QB who, at the time, was fourth on the state's career passing yard list behind Tim Couch, Chris Todd and Brian Brohm.

 

Most shocking thing I've ever had to cover was a high school football game in 1997 when an undersized safety went to tackle a big tight end who had caught a pass over the middle. Safety came in head-first into the tight end's lower back, dropped like a rock and didn't move. Turned out he broke his neck and was paralyzed from the chest down. Happened right in front of me.

That kid's my inspiration, though, because he went on to college, then law school and is working as a lawyer in town. He married his therapist and has twins. He'll never walk again, but he hasn't let that stop him.

 

Summer baseball league championship game, 1997 or so. Local team has to win twice to win it all. Early in game one (which turned out to be the only game played), a kid from the other team slides hard into the local team catcher, who ends up writhing on the ground with torn ligaments. The kid had been accused of playing dirty all season, so the local team was going crazy shouting at him.

That seemed to be the end of it. Local team catcher is carted off to the local hospital. Local team falls behind by a ton, mounts a dramatic comeback and has a chance to win in the last inning but comes up one or two runs short. The teams are lining up for the postgame handshake when local team catcher makes a dramatic return. On crutches, he hobbles down the stairs and into the line.

"I don't have a good feeling about this," says the other reporter from our paper.

Handshake is routine....until hobbled catcher arrives at the kid who injured him. Other kid extends his hand. Hobbled catcher rears back and sucker punches him. Huge brawl breaks out. These two twins on the local team, crazy-ass God squadders, are punching anyone and everyone in sight. There's blood, black eyes, everything. A bunch of guys from the local team charge the dugout to try and get at the kid who injured the catcher. It gets so crazy that my buddy ends up serving as peacemaker, shielding the kid in the dugout and coaxing the locals away.

Meanwhile, in the stands, there's a bunch of screaming, crying kids. And in the home dugout is the manager, crying his eyes out. And after all this, the league had to present first- and second-place awards to teams that were just beating the shit out of each other.

"Don't fight over these!" the commissioner says. Nobody laughs.

Then he asks everyone to stay afterward for refreshments. "We've got cake!" he says.

The cake went untouched, at least until the commish asked me and my buddy to take pieces of it so it wouldn't completely go to waste. Good times.

 

Covered my high school alma mater's fotball season my first full year in the biz. During my time there, the school sucked. Lions-level sucked. So five years later, I'm back in the area covering the team. They stumble early in the season, but get it together and start winning games in their conference against teams that would kill them almost every year. Midway through the season, they face what traditionally has been -- and to this day continues to be -- the conference power. It's a cold, rainy night, and the game itself kinda sucked, but the alma mater somehow holds off the traditional power and beats it for the first time in 32 years. That was pretty cool for a first-year reporter, but two weeks later, the alma mater faces its crosstown rival, a team that won the annual matchup about seven out of every 10 years. Well, it's a defensive battle late into the fourth quarter, the rival leading 10-3. The rival gets the ball with about 2 minutes left, runs three times and has to punt. The alma mater gets the ball back with 47 seconds about 80 yards from the end zone. Two passes get inside the rival's 50 with a few seconds left. QB drops back, looks around and heaves the ball toward the end zone. Receiver runs a perfect post-corner route and the ball lands in his hands as he crosses the goal line in the front corner of the end zone. PAT forces OT, rival gets the ball first, fumbles on the first play, alma mater kicks a field goal two plays later and wins, 13-10. Ultimately, the alma mater made the state playoffs for the first time in years and advanced all the way to the state semis, where they promptly got their ass handed to them. But the two aforementioned games were pretty wild.

 

That sounds an awful lot like a high school state championship baseball game I covered about 10 years ago.

There was a local team playing a team from the north part of the state back when they played all the games home-away-home. I should point out that these were/are two of the five top programs in the state.

Local team won the first game up there, then northern team won the second game at local team's field, after which they did a little victory dance on local team's pitching mound. That was on Saturday.

The deciding game was back up there on Monday night, and our local team won 3-2, scoring the winning run on an error in the sixth. As the local team did the usual dogpile on the mound, the home coach came out of the home dugout yelling for the local team to "get the fuck off my field." Local coach yelled back that they were going to celebrate, period, and the two coaches had to be separated by assistants from both teams. Some home team fans came on the field and spit on some of the local team players, and a near-riot ensued.

There ended up not being a trophy presentation or any other traditional post-game honorifics and the local team was finally escorted to its bus by the home team's sheriff's deputies through a gauntlet of angry home team fans. One of the scariest moments I've ever encountered in 25 years of covering prep sports.

 

I was at the Georgia-USC game in 2001 or 02 when Georgia's David Pollack did this:

Those of us in the box had no idea what happened. Replay blew my mind, at least.

And as you can see at the end of the clip, David Polack made a great interception.

 

That goal allowed by England today could make some lists.

 

That's the one thing I hate about this job. We cover highs and lows all the time. It it isn't likely, but you have to be prepared for tragety.

 

about 4-5 years ago, college football team I cover was playing in what essentially was the game to win the conference title, on the road.

With 5 minutes left, boss and I head to the field, trying to figure out what to write to fill a gamer, notebook, sider and column. They're down 20-7.

Safety makes an open field tackle to force 4th and 2 and punt. Team I cover then scores in four plays, makes it 20-14 with 2 minutes to go.

With 1 timeout left, they then recover the onside kick, which absolutely had to happen. A few plays later, QB takes a dumb sack, turning 3rd and 6 into 4th and 17 with about 25 seconds left. Sure enough, they convert that. On the next play, 1st and goal at the 3, they score, and kick the extra point and win 21-20 after the hail mary falls short.

Crowd of 25,000 is stunned, student section was ready to rush the field, and I can't confirm this, but heard league championship hats were being passed around among the eventual losing team's bench players late in the game.

 

Local football team is up by one with a little more than a minute left in a first round playoff game which shouldn't be even remotely close. Nonlocals have the ball on their own three and do not have a serviceable kicker as the one they did have got hurt. So they have to go all the way down the field and score a touchdown.

The quarterback for the Nonlocals is also hurt. He can't run. So he basically just drops back and heaves it. The receivers catch a few long passes and before you know it they're inside the 10. Eventually they make it to the 1 with about 30 seconds left and on fourth down the QB throws a TD pass with about 20 left. They miss the extra point, so it's a five point spread.

The kick-off is terrible and Local team is set up nicely to attempt to steal the win. They get it down to the 15 and the QB throws an interception in the end zone to end the game.

The tears then flow like I've never seen them flow after a loss.