Want to start a debate in early February? Ask a bunch of fans sitting around a table who they think will win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in two months.
Want to witness an argument worthy of police intervention in restoring peace? Wait until Selection Sunday and check out the howling over teams that were left out of the field. Oh, sure it’s two months later and still nobody knows who’s going to be cutting down the net. But put three fans together and they’ll give you four opinions about whose omission despite a shiny 23-7 or 24-6 record was the most blatant snub.
That’s just the nature of sports fans. We want to think we’re better than the so-called experts at putting together definitive lists.
That brings us to the point of this week’s column (you knew there had to be a point, right?) on the subject of New York high school sports.
Early this year, ESPN had some fun rolling out what it called its “Mount Rushmore” of sports. With the help of fans in all 50 states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the cable network selected four athletes per commonwealth who either came from or played in their state that they feel most represented the respective state's accomplishments in sports.
Two thoughts emerged almost immediately. One, the 208 selections were so lacking in female selections that there should have been an automatic Title IX lawsuit stapled to the envelope with the winners’ names. And secondly, a whole bunch of voters must have had the Jets plus the points in Super Bowl III, because Joe Namath’s inclusion at the expense of Joe DiMaggio or Lew Alcindor was stunning.
With that said, it’s time for us to risk our reputation by unveiling the high school edition of New York’s Mount Rushmore. We’ll pick our female quartet below and follow up soon with the males.
We tried to keep the criteria simple:
(1) The athlete must have achieved a very high level of success as a high school athlete, winning championships and/or accomplishing enough to have merited all-state recognition or comparable honors.
(2) He or she must have gone on to success in collegiate, professional or international competition worthy of high honors or acclaim at that level.
And the winners are ...
Abby Wambach, soccer
It’s a safe bet that Wambach was already on the list a little more than a year ago or was about to get there. And then a not-so-funny thing happened: She broke a leg during an Olympic tune-up against Brazil, leaving her stuck on 99 career goals for the U.S. National Team for nearly 13 months.
Wambach reached the magic 100 mark on July 19 before an adoring hometown crowd of more than 8,000 fans as the United States edged Canada, 1-0, in Rochester.
Wambach is a 1998 graduate of Mercy High outside Rochester, where she was a star in soccer and basketball. She was named the National Soccer Coaches Association of America player of the year as a senior, setting her up for a sensational college career. She led the University of Florida to an NCAA Division I championship and is still the school’s all-time leading scorer.
Wambach has been a regular on the national team since 2003, earning a bronze medal in the World Cup that year as well as in 2007, and scoring the winning goal against Brazil in overtime in the 2004 Olympics gold-medal game.
Chamique Holdsclaw, basketball
The paucity of viable women’s sports pro sports leagues in the U.S. made it all but certain that at least one member of our Mount Rushmore would come from the WNBA, which keeps a relatively low profile on the national sports scene but nevertheless hasn’t bounced any checks yet.
Holdsclaw is the pick for now, but one has to wonder if she’ll even make the “Christ the King girls basketball Mount Rushmore” 20 years from now with Sue Bird and Tina Charles among the stars of a more recent vintage.
Holdsclaw scored 2,118 points during a high school career that included four CHSAA and Federation championships.
That was followed by a brilliant career at Tennessee, where she ascended to No. 1 on the Vols’ career list (men or women) with 3,025 points and 1,295 rebounds to go with her three NCAA championships. One of those titles came in 1998 as Tennessee went 39-0 to become Pat Summit’s first undefeated champion, and she came up a winner in 134 of 151 games.
As you might expect, that added up to Mount Rushmoresque honors: Two Naismith Trophies as player of the year the 1998 Sullivan Award – a first for a women’s college basketball player – and a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics.
Holdsclaw was the No. 1 overall pick of the 1999 WNBA draft, played in the league’s first game, was selected rookie of the year and is averaging 17.5 points and 8.0 rebounds for her career.
Nancy Lieberman, basketball
The younger generation may only know Lieberman from gimmicky developments of recent years, such as her suiting up for the WNBA’s Detroit Shock last year at the age of 50.
But her basketball resume was superb long before then beginning with tuning her game on the asphalt courts of Harlem. Playing for Far Rockaway High School she earned a spot on Team USA in 1974 and earned a gold medal at the World Championships and a silver at the Pan American Games the following year.
In 1976, she earned a silver medalist while the youngest player at the Montreal Olympics.
At Old Dominion, she led the Monarchs to two AIAW national championships as was twice the women’s player of the year.
Lieberman is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., a two-time Olympian and a three-time All-American during her college days. She was the only woman to play in the United States Basketball League with Springfield in 1986 and Long Island in 1987 and also toured with the Harlem Globetrotters as a member of the Washington Generals.
Kim Batten, track and field
Batten roared onto the track and field scene as a Rochester East junior when she won the 400-meter hurdles championship in the state meet in Baldwinsville in the mid-1980s little more than a year after quitting the sport because she found it to be too demanding.
She went on to be a nine-time All-American at Florida State, competing in sprints, the vertical jumps and — of course — the hurdles. She was the Metro Conference outstanding female in each of her final three seasons while gradually narrowing her focus to the hurdles.
Batten enjoyed enormous success after college, winning six USA Track & Field national championships and a silver medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She also ran in the 2000 Olympics. Her crowning achievement, however, was winning the gold at the 1995 World Championships in Goteberg, Sweden. Her time of 52.61 seconds in the race stood as a world record for almost eight full years before finally being eclipsed by Russia’s Yuliya Pechonkina.
Nearly 14 years later, her performance is still No. 2 all-time in the world.