When you’re a boy, few things are worse than losing to a girl at sports. When you’re a man, the feeling doesn’t really change unless the sport is somehow sex-based. But, the times they are a-changin. Women can do stuff now, like vote and drive automobiles. It’s time guys get used to this, and desensitize themselves to losing to women.
We’re here to help, with the definitive list of girls kicking man-ass in sports.
9. Golf – Jenny Suh Wins Virginia State Championship
Before Michelle Wie hoodwinked all the sports talking heads into thinking she could play in a men’s tournament and not blow, Jenny Suh actually put up by winning the Virginia Group AAA Boys Golf Championship back in 2002.
A bit of a fuss was made over Suh teeing off from the women’s tee box instead of the men’s, and therefore only having to cover 80% of the distance the rest of the field had to cover. Whether that’s a distinct advantage is definitely debatable, but what was she supposed to do? Rules are rules, right? Crazy rules are the only thing separating golf from a more dangerous (and probably awesome) version of hockey.
8. More Golf – Alexis Thompson Wins TPC Eagle Trace
Alexis gets the nod over Jenny in the battle of the man-crushing girl golfers because TPC Eagle Trace was a pro tournament, and her girl tee boxes covered 94% of the distance covered by the rest of the 76-man field, as opposed to 80%.
7. Tennis – Billie Jean King Beats Bobby Riggs
This one was billed as “The Battle of the Sexes,” and the once-and-for-all throw down that would prove irrefutably that girls ruled, and boys drooled. Sure, King was 26 years old at the time, and Riggs was closer to 126, but no matter. Winning is winning, and the fact that Riggs was a legendary chauvinist asshole leading up to this match after he’d already beaten female British player Margaret Court several months prior made King’s straight sets victory (6-4, 6-3, 6-3) all the more sweeter. A decade later, King would complete the Amazonian circle by coming out of the closet and admitting she’d rather bone other chicks.
6. Horse Racing – Julie Krone Wins 1993 Belmont Stakes
The 1993 Belmont Stakes wasn’t Julie Krone’s first win as a jockey, but it was by far her biggest. Before her, no woman had ever ridden a horse that had won any leg of The Triple Crown.
And being a jockey is tough—tougher than anyone realizes considering jockeys have to keep up with weight regulations that were established about 100 years ago when the average grown man was probably too short to ride a modern-day roller coaster. That means a lot of puking, fasting, and ex-lax. It’s possible though that—depending on how popular Krone was in high school—she was already familiar with an extreme weight loss regimen.
5. Wrestling – Michaela Hutchison Wins Alaskan State Wrestling Title
Chris Rock put it best: Alaska is basically The Road Warrior…with snow. This implies that Sarah Palin ain’t got shit on the real women of Alaska—women like Michaela Hutchison. Michaela won the final of the 103 lb weight class her sophomore year, in 2006, competing against all guys—the first girl in the history of high school sports to do so.
Even more impressive was the way her opponents pretended to be devastated after being groped and manhandled by a girl for free.
4. Bowling – Kelly Kulick Wins PBA Tour Title
ESPN columnist Rick Reilly made a huge noise about this one a year ago, and with pretty good reason. Technically, Kulick winning the PBA Tournament of Champions last year was the first time in the modern history of ball-based sports that a woman had beaten an entire field of top-level professional athletes.
Granted, it’s still bowling, so calling all the dudes she beat top-level professional athletes is like calling the staff at The Smoking Jacket top-level professional bounty hunters. We mostly just do it for the free pepper spray.
3. Eating – Sonya Thomas Eats More Wings than Joey Chesnut
Before Takeru Kobayashi, the prevailing wisdom was that only fat dudes would win eating contests. After Kobayashi, that wisdom shifted to only dudes would win eating contests. Not because of any physical gender bias, but because it just didn’t seem likely that women would ever be into a contest determined by who could gain the most weight in a matter of minutes.
It’s unlikely Sonya Thomas will start a gender revolution for beating Joey Chesnut in the 2010 Buffalo Wing Eating Contest, but beating Joey Chesnut at any eating-related competition at this point is like out-blackouting Bob Uecker.
Nearly impossible.
2. Army – Sherri Gallagher Wins U.S. Best Warrior Competition
Though it’s probably not even as cool as the Top Gun competition—what with the greasy sand volleyball and homoerotic locker-room stare downs— the Best Warrior Competition is no joke, either. Contestants are judged on events like hand-to-hand competition, night firing and weapons familiarization to determine the best soldier in the U.S.
Gallagher, considered one of the best long-rifle shooters in the country, beat out 11 other dudes to be the first woman to win the title of America’s biggest swinging Rambo-dick since the competition’s inception in 2001. Thus far, her victory has done little to change America’s policy on barring women from certain combat missions, so we guess it’s up to her to present Bin Laden’s nuts before Congress to get them to stop being such player-haters.
1. Baseball – Jackie Mitchell Strikes Out Murderer’s Row
In 1931, the dynasty-mode New York Yankees played an exhibition game against the minor-league Chattanooga Lookouts, who featured a 17-year-old pitcher by the name of Jackie Mitchell. Jackie was a girl, but was taught the game from a very young age by her father. When she entered the contest in the first inning, she struck out Babe Ruth on four pitches, which caused him to vow to never bat against a woman again. She only needed three for the next guy—Lou Gehrig, whom we presume was more gracious.
Rather than inspire the second wave of the Women’s Movement right then and there, Mitchell’s contract was voided only days after by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who subsequently declared women unfit to play baseball, saying that it was “too strenuous.”
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