Difficult Shot: Playing On Tour

Gabe Landeskog is confident he’ll return … at some point. When that is going to be remains very much to be determined. At one point during an end-of-season press conference sitting alongside general manager Chris MacFarland, the Colorado Avalanche captain asked when training camp for the 2024-25 season is going to start. “Between mid-September and the start of April,” Landeskog joked. Landeskog and MacFarland met with the media for nearly an hour Thursday.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve asked my fair share of stupid-(expletive) questions. No athlete is immune to making a stupid-(expletive) play during a game. No coach is impervious to the occasional stupid-(expletive) strategic decision. I’d be remiss not to acknowledge that part of my job is to ask them about those stupid-(expletive) moments, the moments that make us human and that make sports, well, sports.

Amid a lost season, the Rockies’ best pitcher and best position player carried Colorado to victory on Wednesday night in Oakland. Austin Gomber carved up the Athletics, throwing eight innings of one-run ball while continuing to look the part of Colorado’s ace. Then, Ryan McMahon — making a strong case for his first all-star nod — blasted the game-winning, two-run homer in the 12th for a 4-3 victory at the Oakland Coliseum. “(Gomber) was brilliant,” Rockies manager Bud Black told reporters.

COMMERCE CITY — Lily Boydstun shook off her pain and helped deliver a Class 5A state soccer championship to the Mountain Vista Golden Eagles on Wednesday night at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. The senior midfielder left the game with 18:19 remaining due to leg cramps so severe she couldn’t stand. But after getting treatment on the bench, the Arkansas commit re-entered the game to deliver a perfect corner kick to junior Laney Erickson, who side-kicked in the only goal in Mountain Vista’s 1-0 victory over Rock Canyon. The Golden Eagles (18-0-1) captured their fifth title, their first since 2017. “We knew we had to put everything on the line for that goal, and we did,” Erickson said.

On the heels of receiving his third career league MVP trophy, Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was unsurprisingly named First Team All-NBA for the 2023-24 season on Wednesday. Jokic has received All-NBA honors in six consecutive years, including four first-team appearances. He was on the second team last season despite finishing second in MVP voting — making him the last in a long tradition of awkward awards contradictions before the league’s new collective bargaining agreement established positionless All-NBA ballots. This is the first year that zero or multiple centers can appear on the First Team, Second Team or Third Team.

Last weekend, Abbey Glynn attended the prep state track and field meet at Jefferson County Stadium, and it became a trip down memory lane. The Colorado Buffaloes’ star wound up watching a few videos of herself from her time at Mead High School. “It’s crazy how far I’ve come,” she said. Now a fifth-year senior at CU, Glynn will compete in the NCAA West regional preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark., on Thursday and Saturday.