I devoted a good fourteen years of my life to sports. Sadly, after all the blood, sweat and tears, these are my greatest accomplishments to date.

#3 – Three-Quarter-Court Punt Swish
You’ll have to take my word for this one, for there is only one person who can confirm this and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t real. I was in a gym practicing my mid-range jumpers (some call them “lay-ups”) and after missing one too many, I did what any don’t-know-a-healthy-way-to-control-my-emotions teenager would do – I punted the ball clear across the court. But unlike the many other times I had pulled that stunt, this time I was rewarded for my childishness. The ball hit the center of the backboard square and went straight in. I learned a valuable lesson that day – It is always OK to kick basketballs out of frustration.

#2 – Football to Stop Sign
Like most 26-year-olds, I was standing outside my house with a bunch of high school guys trying to hit a stop sign about 40 yards away with a football. One of the guys had already hit it in what appeared to be a guaranteed win, for no one else had even come close. Then it was my turn.

Aiming straight at it, I rared back and heaved the football at a 45° angle right, folding under pressure yet again. Suddenly, in what I have dubbed “The Miracle on Alpine Drive”, the football bounced off a nearby telephone pole and took a hard left straight into the middle of the stop sign. I tried to convince them to carry me off on their shoulders, but they kept refusing.

#1 – Practice Glory
It was a Saturday afternoon, the Spring of my Junior year. Our team was engaged in a practice game as some sort of punishment for the way we had played the night before. The coaches were pitching so our starters’ arms wouldn’t be wasted for next week’s games (you wouldn’t believe how fast and awesome our coaches pitched). I came up to the plate, bases loaded, down by three, bottom half of the inning. I had successfully trained everyone to expect me to ground out to shortstop (including myself), so you can imagine everyone’s surprise when I belted a grand slam over the left field wall.

As I rounded first I was imagining how I was going to react to the team awaiting me at home plate (a la SportsCenter). Would I jump onto the plate? Throw my helmet in the air? How popular would this make me at school on Monday? As I rounded second I looked up to find my entire team already cleaning up the field, completely unphased by what just happened. If I remember correctly, third base was already uprooted before I could even touch it. The closest thing to recognition that I received that day was when one of the Seniors looked at me and said “Nice hit, Kevin.”

What are your greatest obscure sports moments?
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