My fave athletes of all time

The following list ran on the Sunday's Audibles page in Sunday's (imagine that) Southeast Missourian. I've gotten multiple requests to post it, so here it is. Please leave your top 5 down in the comments!

Every sports fan has their list of favorite athletes. Mine has evolved and I'm sure will continue to do so, but here's what I settled on for today.

1. Novak Djokovic: It's hard to explain my love for Novak, who just a couple weeks ago was slipped from the No. 1 to No. 2 tennis player in the world. In 2007 I was desperate to find a player who wanted to challenge Roger Federer more than they wanted to compliment him. Novak, who happened to be about my age, emerged as that guy at the U.S. Open even though he lost to Federer in the final, and I was hooked.

Since then Novak has been through some pretty extreme lows and highs, and even though I've been sitting in my living room through most of them, it's always felt like we were going through them together. He's open and honest and was sometimes mentally frail in the early part of his career, all of which has brought him negative attention. But he's also relentless. It took him an identity crisis or two and a bunch of failure, but he became the best player in the world. I watched it all unfold, I lived it as much as a fan can live it and I may never love another athlete as much.

2. Yadier Molina: Yadi is everything I love about the Cardinals -- an elite player, even at an elite level, a leader, a winner and a character. I've read plenty about him and heard plenty he has to say, but I still don't understand why he thinks neck tattoos are a good idea. The beautiful thing is I don't care. He's gotten progressively better when he could've settled for how good he already was, and he's an embodiment of some the best years in Cardinals history. Plus, all catchers tend to belong to a special class of humans.

3. Bud Eley: I was as big of a Southeast Missouri State basketball fan as you could find growing up, and Bud Eley was my favorite player to wear an Indians' uniform. (Unless you count the ones I had crushes on when I was in high school, which we definitely are not going to discuss.) I've written about it before, but I wasn't yet a teenager when Eley was starring at Southeast. Watching him was pretty much the equivilant of watching MJ as far as I was concerned. It's hard to replicate that kind of innocent (and clueless) childhood sports love when you grow up.

4. Peyton Manning: The story of how I came to adore Peyton is one I'm not proud of. Basically, I hated Chris Weinke and didn't think it was "fair" that a guy so old (in my view at the time) got to play college football. I turned to Peyton and Tennessee to beat him somehow, probably on some random Saturday watching football. Thank goodness I did. There are few things that bring me more joy than watching Peyton run an offense. You don't have to cheer for him, but if you can't appreciate the opportunity to watch him, you're missing out.

5. Holly Jansen: I was a sophomore in high school when Holly led the Leopold volleyball team to a state championship as a senior. I've seen some that might be able to match her, but other than Otto Porter, I've never seen a more dominant high school athlete.

I was just a JV setter at Leopold that year, but I got to stay and practice with the varsity. I don't remember how it started, but Holly and I stayed after practice day after day and I would set her for as long as she wanted. Most of the time it was just the two of us in the gym by the time she said she was ready to go, and I was always hoping she'd ask for just one more set.

She was the best player on the team, the best conditioned player on the team, the hardest working player on the team and totally selfless. I didn't get to play on the court with her in games, but, selfishly, I remember thinking and appreciating that I had my own small part in her success that season. I kept staying after practices the rest of my high school career to set whatever hitters stayed with me, and that was all because of Holly.

I remember one freshman who kept staying longer than all the others during my senior year. She hadn't even made the JV roster that season, but she had raw (and pretty uncontrollable) power. Before she graduated she was an all-state player on a final four team. She certainly would have turned out to be good whether or not she'd gotten in a few extra swings after practice, but I don't think I'd have been there without Holly.

It's a lesson in the influence one hard-working player can have on a team years after they leave and the reason, after all this time, Holly popped into my head when I sat down to write this list.