Can you ace this pack of trivia questions about Northern Nevada sports?

Because you’re (presumably) indoors — either with a print edition of the Reno Gazette Journal in your hands or scrolling around on RGJ.com — we’ll assume your family’s annual backyard football game has come to a premature end because Grandma tweaked her hip on the second play from scrimmage, and she was the linchpin for the pistol offense you were running.

But there’s still one more family sporting competition on the agenda, if you have a very forgiving definition of what counts as a “sport”: It’s this quiz about local athletics! Break out your scorecards and figure out who’s the champion of Nevada sports knowledge.  

➤ 1. Reno High’s Dirk Borgognone kicked a high-school-record 68-yard field goal in 1985. What’s the NFL record for longest field goal?

➤ 2. In 1997, British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green made history on the Black Rock Desert when he …

• set a land speed record that still stands today.
• hit a golf ball 600 yards, thanks in part to the thin, dry desert air.
• sprinted naked through Burning Man, prompting all other Burners to realize, “Huh, did you guys know we could be naked at this thing?”

➤ 3. On Aug. 6, 1907, umpire John T. Powers took the field for a game in Goldfield with a notable form of protection. What was it?

• A face mask — the first time one was worn by an umpire.
• An umbrella, to protect from the southern Nevada summer sun.
• A pair of revolvers.

➤ 4. Wooster alum Patty Sheehan was one of eight athletes to share the title of Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1987. How many other women golfers have won the award in its seven-decade history?

➤ 5. Wooster alum Greg LeMond won the Tour de France three times. How many other Americans have won the award?

➤ 6. Nevada athletics has won team national championships in which sports?

• Skiing; rugby; track and field
• Boxing; rifle; women’s swimming and diving
• Polo; horse racing; horseback basketball

➤ 7. Which of these short-lived Reno sports franchises lasted the longest:

• NBA D-League Reno Bighorns
• USL’s Reno 1868 FC
• Indoor football’s Reno Barons

➤ 8. The famous Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries boxing match took place on East Fourth Street in Reno on July 4, 1910. How long had Reno been preparing for the fight?

• One year
• Two weeks
• About 45 minutes; city officials were notified by telegraph when Johnson and Jeffries were already on their way here

➤ 9. Of all the sports venues ever built within Reno’s city limits, which had the most seats?

• The temporary arena built for the Johnson-Jeffries fight
• Greater Nevada Field
• Mackay Stadium

➤ 10. When hockey goalie Manon Rhéaume played for the West Coast Hockey League’s Reno Renegades in 1996-97, she set a record for the most games played by a woman in a predominantly men’s league. How many games did she appear in?

• Two
• Eleven
• All 58 games that season

➤ 11. When the Reno Golf Club — now Washoe Golf Course — opened in 1917, it was noteworthy because …

• the course was designed by the inventor of golf, Lord Jeffrey M. Golf.
• due to wartime rationing, rubber golf ball cores had to be replaced with sagebrush leaves.
• the course’s head instructor was the only female golf pro in the country.

➤ 12. Rounding to the nearest five, how many sports teams has the state of Nevada taken from northern California in the past four years?

Answers:

1. The pro record is 66 yards by Baltimore’s Justin Tucker in 2021. (Sure, Borgognone’s kick was aided by the use of a tee, but come on — 68 yards. By a high schooler.)
2. Green’s and his racecar, ThrustSSC, reached 763 mph on the wide, flat playa — the first car to travel faster than the speed of sound.
3. A pair of revolvers. According to newspaper accounts, he was disarmed by the local sheriff.
4. Zero.
5. Zero. (Yes, Lance Armstrong won seven times, but he doesn’t count anymore, for reasons.)
6. Boxing (1964, 1968, 1976, 1978, 1991, 1993, 2015); rifle (1956); women’s swimming and diving (1979). The rifle team was discontinued in 2018.
7. The Reno Bighorns lasted 10 seasons, while Reno 1868 FC lasted four. The Reno Barons played part of the 2011 season before running out of funding.
8. Two weeks. The fight originally was to take place in San Francisco, but California Gov. James Gillett ordered it to be canceled, deeming it to be “demoralizing to the youth of our state.”
9. It’s Mackay Stadium, which currently seats 30,000 but at one point sat as many as 31,545. The open-air arena for the Johnson-Jeffries fight only seated 20,000 (still an impressive feat for a town with a population of just 10,687).
10. Rhéaume played 425 minutes across 11 games, compiling a 2-4 record for the woeful Renegades (who went 16-43 that season).
11. English-born Isabella May Gourlay Dunn-Webb was the driving force in creating the course, and wrote a column on golf tips for the Reno Evening Gazette.
12. By our count, the actual number is four teams. The NFL’s Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020; semipro hockey’s Ice Raiders moved from Vacaville to Reno in 2021; the NBA G League’s Ignite moved from Walnut Creek to Henderson in 2022 and MLB’s Oakland A’s are planning a move to a new Las Vegas ballpark by the 2028 season.

Brett McGinness is the engagement editor for the Reno Gazette Journal. He’s also the writer of The Reno Memo — a free newsletter about news in the Biggest Little City. Subscribe to the newsletter right here. Consider supporting the Reno Gazette Journal, too.