First, we start with cricket and Janeiro Tucker. Success in Cup Match, and especially at Wellington Oval, is nothing new to Tucker. He scored his first century there in 1999 and made as comfortable a start this year after St. George’s, despite going into the match with a much-ballyhooed batting line-up, won the toss and elected to bowl on a lifeless track.

After getting a few cheap wickets, the east-enders felt the brunt of Tucker’s broad bat and he scored freely to all corners of the ground. When the 26-year-old passed the former record of 173 with a cover drive for four, the pitch turned into a sea of red and blue — it was an occasion for the ages, with Lloyd James, who had waited 39 years to see his record broken, on hand to pay homage to the young star.

What made the accomplishment more fitting was that it banished to the background a series of unsporting antics by the home team that threatened to spoil the match’s centenary celebrations.

Tucker’s feat also did much to ease the pain of Bermuda’s failed effort at the ICC Trophy in Canada. If there was a category for “Bermuda’s Worst”, the trials and tribulations of the national team, from the announcement of former England Test batsman Roland Butcher as coach to the shock early exit at the hands of unfancied Namibia, would rank right up there.

Butcher, who spent more time during his brief tenure in England preparing for legal proceedings, finally accepted the inevitable a little more than a month before the tournament began.

In came Mark Harper, from Guyana, but the die was long cast and Bermuda’s performances were predictably inconsistent.

Back on the domestic scene, St. David’s were well on their way to sweeping all before them on the way to four titles, although Bermuda’s struggles in Canada suggest that standards on local soil were shockingly low.

A perfect season by St. David’s was tarnished in many circles by the bizarre awarding of the Champion of Champions trophy without the final being contested against Willow Cuts.

El James, president of the Bermuda Cricket Board of Control, attempted to explain the decision as normal but overlooked the fact that this competition has allowed previously for the two matches to be completed in a day due to adverse conditions — as was the case in 1994 when Bailey’s Bay defeated Willow Cuts before losing to Western Stars in a truncated final.

The year ended with the announcement that James will not be standing for re-election at the next annual general meeting. Reginald Pearman, the veteran administrator, and Keith Wainwright, chairman of the Western Counties, are the front-runners to assume the leadership.

The year in football ended as it began — with action plans. In an ironic twist, Robert Calderon, the former national coach who publicly criticised the first plan, is a significant player in the formation of the second, as a leading member of the new executive headed by Larry Mussenden.

Central to Mussenden’s early influence at the helm of the Bermuda Football Association was a policy of zero tolerance in the war against drugs in and around the sport.

This served to shift the focus away from deteriorating standards on the pitch, with “Police presence” instead of “presence of quality” proving the catch-phrase in the early stages.

When the football caught up, Devonshire Cougars upstaged the fancied clubs to win their first significant title, the Martonmere Cup, and they did it against their most fierce rival, North Village.

Cougars approach the new year on the verge of eclipsing all expectation as they were in the hunt for the Dudley Eve Trophy, contested by the top four clubs at the season’s mid-point, before six-time winners PHC brought them crashing back to earth in the final elimination match.

Dandy Town overcame Village at the death to capture the league title in Andrew Bascome’s first season in charge but thus far in 2001-02 they have shown little to suggest that another championship run is in the offing.

On the international scene, Shaun Goater continued to fly the Bermuda flag with distinction despite an up and down year. The Manchester City forward, after making a belated debut in the English Premiership due to injury, was the team’s leading scorer with 12 goals.

The 2000-01 season ended in relegation sadly, but the Bermudian was quick out of the blocks this term and is on a pace to set a new club scoring record, with 23 goals to his credit at press time.

The news for Kyle Lightbourne, the other Bermudian based in Britain, is quite the opposite as he was passed on from Second Division side Stoke City to Macclesfield Town, of the Third Division, where he has struggled to maintain fitness.

Closer to home, David Bascome enjoyed a good year at Harrisburg Heat, of the Major Indoor Soccer League in the US, where he was a finalist for Player of the Year with Meshach Wade in tow. And college student John Barry Nusum, presently in Bermuda to assist Wolves’ cause in the Dudley Eve Trophy, appears set to become the fifth Bermudian to join the professional ranks after an outstanding season at Furman University earned him All-American honours for the third year running.

The low point of the year in football was the imprisonment of Kacy Simons in July for his part in the assault on referee Perry Scott during a Commercial League fixture.

Simons, represented by Mussenden, whose future prospects would take a turn for the better, pleaded with the magistrate that he would not like to go to prison for an offence he had committed only once. To which Edward King replied famously: “Cain only killed Abel one time!”

In another year, Michael Sims would be an automatic choice in the next Government Sports Awards as athlete of the year, such was his impact on the golf course. He may still be, but there is considerable competition in the form of Janeiro Tucker and Brian Wellman.

Nevertheless, Sims brought local golf fans to the edge of their seats with victories in two established tournaments in the United States — the North and South Amateur and the Players’ Amateur — before a stirring run through the US Amateur.

This was the event that Tiger Woods, the world number one, won three times in succession from 1992 to 1994 before turning pro, so for Sims, a senior at the University of Rhode Island, to reach the quarter-finals from a starting field of more than 7,750 was monumental.

Bubba Dickerson, his conqueror by the narrow margin of 1-up in the last eight, went on to claim the title and, as is tradition, will tee off in the same pairing as Tiger Woods, the champion, for the first two rounds of the 2002 Masters.

Such was Sims’ appeal that there was an outcry for his inclusion in the Bermuda team for the World Cup in Malaysia.

Ultimately, after much debate about the amateur status of the 22-year-old, professionals Dwayne Pearman and Andrew Trott were chosen, but the Island withdrew after Pearman backed out, citing concerns about safety in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Wellman has been competing at the top level of world athletics for the past 12 years but, after a season in which he bottomed out at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the end was considered to be nigh.

In July, the 34-year-old dusted off his wounded pride to produce an effort of 17.24 metres (56 feet, six-and-three-quarter inches) to win the triple jump at the CAC Track and Field Championships in Guatemala City.

That success instilled Wellman with the belief that he can be among the world’s best again and he went on to place sixth at the World Championships in Edmonton, finishing the year ranked 10th by Track and Field News<$>.

The achievement only broadened the smile on the face of local athletics after a host of youngsters started the ball rolling with two golds amid a five-medal return from the CARIFTA Games in Barbados, the country’s best showing at that level in a number of years.

On the road running scene, Kavin Smith and Anna Eatherley reigned supreme, with Smith winning his seventh Marathon Derby while Eatherley was unbeaten on the road. The Island’s top female runner was unwillingly in the middle of a squabble that soiled the end of the athletics year as Bermuda hosted the CAC Cross-Country Championships without a full complement of local teams.

Smith and Jay Donawa, the national cross-country champion, led the senior men to the bronze medal and young Mark Morrison held off the top Puerto Rico runners to finish third in the junior men’s race. But the furore over the absence of a senior women’s team consigned these noteworthy accomplishments to a footnote, with the Bermuda Track and Field Association going to such extraordinary lengths to defend itself, that it commissioned a half-page advertisement to criticise The Royal Gazette’s <$>reporting of the affair.

The changing face of tennis saw much of the emphasis placed on the youth, with many of the Island’s top teenagers plying their trade in overseas competition. Evidence of the shift was provided by the make-up of the Fed Cup team that finished a precedent-setting eighth in Americas Group II in May, where three of the four players were in their teens.

There were low periods as well, with charges of racism levelled at Coral Beach and Tennis Club, the site of the XL Bermuda Open, and Sam Maybury, the youth development officer who became the top-ranked men’s singles player at the age of 43, gaining increased notoriety for the wrong reasons after a much-publicised tirade during a tournament doubles match that resulted in him receiving a ban from coaching.

Peter Bromby, crowned Male Athlete of the Year at the beginning of 2001 for his feats on the waters the previous year, maintained his high standards while with a new crew, Martin Siese, as they romped to victory in the prestigious Bacardi Cup in Miami. After another season when the three-time Olympian was impressive in local fleet racing, Bromby closed by reaching the quarter-finals of the Colorcraft Gold Cup. His scalps in that event included Dennis Conner, of America’s Cup fame.

But, perhaps, the most significant event in sailing in 2001 was the launching of Team Tyco’s VO 60 yacht as one of eight entrants in the Volvo Ocean Race. Tyco, <$>an historic first Bermuda entry in the famous event, formerly known as the Whitbread Round the World Race, is in seventh place with six points after two legs. The yacht was fourth on the first leg from Southampton, England, to Cape Town, but suffered rudder damage 650 nautical miles into the second leg, from Cape Town to Sydney, and withdrew. The third leg began on December 26, with the fleet sailing via Hobart into Auckland, New Zealand, the hometown of Kevin Shoebridge, Tyco<$>’s skipper.

Karen Smith was the dominant figure in the sport of triathlon. She won every event she competed in locally but it was her performances overseas, highlighted by a 15th-place finish in her category at the world championships in Edmonton, that may give her the nod over Anna Eatherley when considerations are made for Female Athlete of the Year.

On the male front, Kent Richardson made the quantum leap from trier to doer when he won both the Bank of Bermuda Individual Triathlon and the national championships to finish the year as the leading locally-based triathlete. And young Tyler Butterfield capped his season by placing 25th junior at the world championships.

Kris Hedges captured most of the plaudits on the cycling scene, with top efforts in the Sinclair Packwood Heritage Day Race, the national championships and in winning the time-trial at the inaugural Caribbean Championships in Aruba.

Bermuda hosted another successful World Rugby Classic but there was disappointment soon after when the national team were beaten by Trinidad & Tobago in the Caribbean Championships final in the Cayman Islands and, by extension, failed to advance to the World Cup qualifiers.

Headlines in boxing were made with the advent of women entering the picture while it took the formation of the Bermuda United Motorsports Federation to head off a row between the Sports Ministry and the Bermuda Motor Racing Club over the use of Southside.

Dennis Lister, who initiated the short-lived ban on racing, is now the Minister for the Environment after the Cabinet reshuffle in November — and not a moment too soon, given his “revealing” proclamation in May that cricket and football are Bermuda’s national sports — absolutely shocking!

Randy Horton, the former Somerset Cup Match captain whose greatest claim to sporting excellence was instead on the football pitch with New York Cosmos of the now-defunct North American Soccer League, has been handed ministerial responsibility for sport.

But, as was the case with its predecessor in the UBP, the ruling Government has mandated that Youth and Sport in this country is too minimal to be afforded a portfolio of its own. So Horton has been lumped also with Community and Cultural Affairs, Consumer Affairs, Human Rights, Race Relations and the Commission for Unity and Racial Equality. Phew — oxygen, please!

So there you have it, 2001. Can 2002 top it? There’s every chance, with all the traditional leading events upcoming on the domestic calendar and a large contingent expected to travel to Manchester, England, in July for the 17th Commonwealth Games.

As any coach worth their salt would say: “You have to be in it to win it.”

Have a sporting and happy New Year!