way to get one whole female featured on here—wahoo!
 
dig the photos, though. very nice.

Christ, emma. And how many singular MEN do you see featured? What a shitty perspective. Take your reactionary  crap somewhere else.
 
Sorry, but that’s a horrendous comment.

@Emma
Most of the awards in this category went to geographic locations.  For the rest of them, three went to men’s teams and one went to an individual woman.  I would hope that both men’s and women’s sports were eligible for the best/worst categories, so in the end we’re not too far from a demographically accurate 50-50 split.
 
If we really want to be equitable about it, there is at least one women’s team out there that had a worse season, rankings wise, than the football team, but it’s much more hip to take shots at the bloated football program rather than a small group of student athletes toiling in relative obscurity.  

Nice staged photos. But I gotta ask: given this aside, “this fanatic has on more than one occasion pretended to be playing at Wimbledon with an old wooden racquet,” why no photo?

Best bike race:...?

If you’ll look closely, the human being on the perimeter at Phillips has breasts, so there’s one more for you.  And she was a total baller so ... wait, is that inappropriate?

Maybe one of us could have put a kind of lipped container between our legs, though I’m not sure that would have helped.  I guess goofing on the excessive machismo of sports at the outset didn’t win us any points.  Oh well, back to my Smiths records and Foucault.

Pete, you are right that Seth overreacted (as did Emma). But I disagree that the feature tipped too heavily in favor of men. Half of the feature is about places and I don’t really care if the photos of those places feature men or women. If you’ve ever been to an outdoor basketball court in C-U, then you know snapping a random photo that features women is not an easy task.
 
As for “hipster” men and watching WNBA games, that’s an absurd comment. How many non-“hipster” men do you know who watch WNBA games? Does anyone watch WNBA games? No.

Pete/Doug —
 
Being reactionary is pretty rational to me when one is reacting to something completely and utterly outlandish, such as emma’s comment.
 
Yes, I was reacting — no question there. But over-reacting?
 
Sorry — it won’t wash.

Ok, so comment 9 was me.  I’m sorry.  I couldn’t help it.
 
On a serious note regarding this issue, I would like to mention that the gender breakdown at Momentum is pretty equal.  If you’re a woman and are at all interested in crossfit, I highly recommend checking it out.  I find gyms to generally be very dislikable places, but men and women go to Momentum to train, not to gawk at themselves and others in the mirrors.  And man or woman, the trainers are great at tailoring the program to your level of fitness.

Seth’s sorry. Can we talk about guns now, or at least absinthe?

Yeah, sorry. I just thought these fellas did a great job with this article, and I thought that first comment was intended to take away from their obvious poke at machismo.
 
Carry on, carry on…

pretty male-heavy comment section too, eh?
 
gender stuff aside—I enjoyed the article! Would like to see some mention of a pretty huge fucking deal that’s happening here in 4 days. We have a marathon taking over our towns! One that serves as a Boston Qualifier no less! The work and preparation and collabortion it takes to make this event happen is mind-blowing, and definitely worth noting in a “Best Of” sports article. So if anyone is interested in watching some of the area’s best athletes this weekend, come out and support the runners on Saturday!

@Kelly & Emma,
Those are both reasonable suggestions, and I’d like to explain their omissions. Cycling & competitive running are both things that we have regular columns about (in fact, check back Thursday afternoon for Jeff Kohmstedt’s Illinois Marathon preview!), and we sort of tried to diverge from our normal coverage for the BEST Sports stuff. So: no Illini basketball, extra general silliness, in-depth park analysis, etc. Our #1 goal with this was to make it fun for us to write and fun for you to read. We suck at being comprehensive; this has been proven. We’ll try to incorporate suggestions into future installments, including shameless attempts at gender equity. Thanks for the feedback.

Wow, how the comments fly.  Just when you think you’ve written a relatively harmless article…  My only protest here has nothing to do with sexism, guns, or absinthe.  Best tennis court..EISNER PARK?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  You can’t compare it to Wimbledon, unless you have been there and had a completely different experience than I have.  Eisner’s court is poorly-maintained for the vast majority of the year.  And don’t try to play there at night, trust me.

@JJ —
 
Perhaps I don’t see my use of the word Christ as taking it “in vain.” But thanks for checking it. Word.

Sidney,
 
I totally take your point about Eisner.  It’s not where I would want to play if I were actually training for Wimbledon (and no, the subject of that fantasy was not myself).  
 
I will say this in its defense.  It was redone in the last year, so it’s in better shape these days.  We were mainly attempting to highlight something surprising that’s a little off the beaten path.  Atkins is a better facility, hands down.  But like the writer said, this is an old neighborhood court.  At Wrigley, Fenway or other old ballparks, sometimes you have to deal with hills in the outfield, weird angles, and strangely disconnected walls.  Here, it’s more like short fences, line indentations, and pine tree detritus.  But that’s what makes it fun.  And no, you can’t play at night because, also like old Wrigley, there are no lights.