SI SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR
USA Softball press release
Oklahoma City, OK---Sports Illustrated Magazine, which
featured the USA Softball Women’s Olympic Team on its cover August 30, 2004
following perhaps the most dominate performance in Olympic history, has the
Olympic gold medal winning team as one of its 13 candidates for the SI Sportsman
of the Year award. Fans have the opportunity to voice their opinion by logging
on to
Sports Illustrated
and placing their vote in the fan poll.
USA Softball joins the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Pistons as the only teams
among the candidates being considered and Connecticut’s Diana Taurasi as the
lone female representative.
Other individuals included in the poll are New England quarterback Tom Brady,
Minnesota Timberwolves Kevin Garnett, Connecticut’s Emeka Okafor, Calgary
Flames’ Jarome Iginla, gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps, tennis champion
Roger Federer, Seattle Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki, Tour de France champion Lance
Armstrong and former Arizona Cardinal Pat Tillman who was killed while fighting
the war in Afghanistan.
Here is what Sports Illustrated said about the USA Softball Team:
The real U.S. Dream Team at the Athens Games was a consortium of softball
players, who won the gold medal for the third straight time. The team finished
the Games with a 9-0 record and didn’t surrender a run until the sixth inning of
the final game. Overall, they outscored their counterparts 51-1. The team was a
showcase of masterful pitching, immaculate fielding, sentient base-running and
prodigious hitting. As one fan in Athens put it “These girls could be the
Milwaukee Brewers.” Apart from their peerless play, they were easy to root for.
Their coach, Mike Candrea, lost his wife to a brain aneurysm a month before the
Games. The players competed with an extra dose of heart, knowing that their
sport might be eliminated from the 2012 Games. Players surrendered their place
in the line-up and on the mound without the slightest complaint. “I just love
this team,” Candrea said at the press conference after the gold medal game.
“This is the greatest moment of my life.”
end