Commissioner
Sarah, aka Goon Squad Sarah, lives in the Washington D.C. suburbs and spends a lot of time obsessing about The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, fantasy football, and explaining to her five year old twins why we don’t root for the Redskins in our house. She attended (and graduated from and YES it is an accredited school, Gabe) The University of Central Florida. She was a senior when Daunte Culpepper was a freshman. Shut the hell up – you are old too. Sarah is also a sucker for The Orlando Magic and she is still trying to choose between The Tampa Bay Lightning and The Washington Capitals.
If you can’t get enough of Sarah here you can also find her writing at Sarah and the Goon Squad, MamaPop. BlogHer, Loser Moms, DC Metro Moms Blog and about 20 other places on the internet. She also sits on the advisory board of Women Talk Sports.
Coach
Laurie won her first writing award at her Maryland Catholic elementary school - an envelope of two-dollar bills from football-crazy nuns – in the second grade for a poem about the Washington Redskins. She still does not understand downs, so this just proves that she will write just about anything for the promise of money and minor glory. Try her.
(Those nuns were from Philly so the fact that that they were rooting for the Redskins now makes the least sense of almost anything in the world.)
A hockey and college basketball freak, fourth-generation Washingtonian and University of Maryland, College Park, alum she came late to sports obsession but grew up with George Michael on the tv and has her grandmother, father and uncles to thank for her currently obnoxious behavior during Capitals and Terps basketball games. She both laments and rejoices in the knowledge that once this has started, it will never stop, amen.
Her other interests include the WNBA, Dayton basketball (Go Flyers!,) tailgating, Capitals first-period goals, three-pointers and beer. She dislikes any former Patrick Division team, (especially the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers) overtime any time and serial retirers. She will someday have Capitals season tickets, attend an NFL game, and understand downs.
Other writing happens at LaurieWrites and BlogHer. She still lives in – and loves – Maryland.
Team Roster
ClumberKim is a sports geek. The die was cast early, by age 8, when Kim told anyone who would listen that she wanted to be the Boston Bruins statistician when she grew up. She could rattle off the roster by number, position, or hometown.
Her sports interests are diverse, ranging from figure skating to football. She loves to watch golf, read books about golf, and trash talk golf, but she has never swung a club. The Fantasia Gardens course at Disney World doesn’t count. Her participation in sports is limited to tennis in high school, rugby in college (where she excelled in the third half), and pitching endlessly to her baseball-loving son.
She has never forgiven her family for not taking her to game 7 of the 1975 World Series. To add insult to injury, she was in college with a bunch of Met fans from Brooklyn in 1986. Her first whiff of weed was in the bleachers at Fenway Park. She did not inhale.
Kim lives in Pittsburgh, the City of Champions.
In her youth Devra was told repeatedly she possessed tremendous athletic ability. Her elementary school PE teacher, her junior high school PE teacher, and her high school PE teacher all agreed she was able to do athletics, but would never actually be athletic do to her overwhelming lack coordination. At the University of Arizona, Devra earned a name with the Wildcats, not because she actually played for the team, but because the players nicknamed her “Cookie” because she gave them all her care packages clearly sent to her by evil people who wanted her to gain the Freshman 15. While at U of A, Devra experienced a brief tenure as an Intramural soccer player only to be sidelined from an injury sustained from being cleated by a Theta girl. Later Devra attended graduate school at Grambling State University, home of Eddie Robinson the “Winningest Coach In College Football history” which has absolutely nothing to do with Devra, other than she really enjoyed the marching band. A lot. Currently Devra lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two sons and will never ever in a million years be a fan of the Redskins.
Kendra, or Headless Mom as she’s known around the interwebs, has been a sports fan for as long as she can remember and comes by it honestly. Her grandmother was never far from her tv or radio with the play-by-play on, and her mother seems to prefer sports talk radio to cooking dinner. Kendra loves football the most, but certainly has an opinion about (almost) all sports out there. She loved tennis until her (fake) husband, Boris Becker, retired. Getting cable so she could watch ESPN was the only condition that she had before moving in with her current (and only real) husband, Headless Dad. He is currently a Golf Channel addict. Their three Headless children are currently being brainwashed by their mother to hail all things gridiron. She also writes about her life at The Adventures of the Headless Family.
Kemp lives in the far-south Chicago suburbs with his wife and twin daughters. He’s a lifelong Cardinals fan, he’s now drowning in a sea of obnoxious Cubs fans.
He attended Eastern Illinois University, graduating four years before Tony Romo took the reigns of the EIU football team (what, I needed <i>some</i> kind of sport connection).
Kemp is also a fan of the St Louis Rams (shut up, they’ve at least won a Super Bowl in the last 10 or so years), the St Louis Blues, the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Bears.
He detests the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, the New York Mets, the New York Islanders, the New York Rangers, the New York Giants and the New York Jets (have you sensed a theme here?)
If you can’t get enough of Kemp here you can also find his writing at Kemp’s Blog and Political Sighs.
Kristin, who also answers to Kristabella or “Hey! Drunk Girl!”, is a reformed band geek with an amazing ability to drink most people under the table. She honed her drinking skills as a student at Arizona State and is proud to be one of the few people who not only graduated from ASU, but graduated in four years. After working in the sports information office at ASU, which included a Rose Bowl appearance and a point-shaving scandal, Kristin landed a job with the San Francisco 49ers and spent six years living out a life-long fantasy of working in professional sports and getting sexually harassed every day. She now lives in Chicago and yells at athletes through the TV set. They can totally hear her.
You can read her other inane ramblings at her personal blog, Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977, where she talks about her exciting life as a spinster with two cats and a fascination for Bacon.
Despite being a rather unathletic child who was usually picked last for kickball, got pneumonia the first (and only) time she joined a soccer team, and didn’t really learn to hit until her 6th season of softball, LoriHC decided in high school that she was going to be the first female coach in the NFL. Well, ok, that didn’t happen, but she *does* coach a fantasy football team every fall, and she learned to play ice hockey at age 31 (surprisingly, she’s still improving at age 40). Thanks to a nomadic existence, Lori is a Red Sox fan, a San Jose Sharks fan, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and a Tiger Woods fan. There was a brief flirtation with the Boston Celtics in 8th grade, but Lori’s interest in basketball is now limited to when the University of Georgia women’s team makes the NCAA tournament. She enjoys golfing with her husband, but she’d rather watch golf and play hockey than watch hockey or play golf. Lori can also be found at avocado8 and The Ice Hockey Escapades.
Clay is sure the Mayans have it all wrong and that Bruce Lee will actually resurrect in 2012, bringing peace via the impending threat of an almighty tiger claw from the heavens. It’s all in “The New Bible” which Clay is currently writing with a group of imaginary friends he calls his “Aposse.” Clay is in advertising where he convinces people to buy things. Watch this: The New Bible. If you don’t buy it, you’ll probably die.
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Roger is some guy who sometimes writes about the sports as it pertains to him and him alone.
You can also find Roger at Marginally Clever.
(This part here you should just ignore. Sarah is having trouble with her spacing and since Roger’s bio is so short she has to put this here so the next picture doesn’t come up here and make the whole page look crazy. We will never speak of this again. SB)
Tricia was raised as a Dodgers fan and somehow married into a Yankee loving household. Sacrilege she knows, her dad doesn’t understand it either. After moving to Seattle she decided to raise her two boys as Mariners fans. When in Rome and all that jazz. During college basketball season she bleeds red and blue for the Arizona Wildcats and hates Duke with a passion.
Tricia is pretty good at most sports, but she’s not great at all of them. She has her dad to thank for her love of sports. Her dad encouraged sports play and lived by the mantra, “If you can touch it, you can catch it.” She ended up with a lot of bloody noses. He also said that almost every problem could be solved with a “stick with a hook” and that’s pretty much true, so these are the things she tries to live by. Bloody nose or no.
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