This past year provided many memorable events to cover and plenty of memorable quotes along the way.

There were hundreds to choose from, but these are the quotes that made the top list. Enjoy as you recall some of the highlights of the past year:

“I always tell this to people: ice preserves you. Look at the mammoths that come out of the glaciers from a couple of thousand years ago. They look just like new and I feel that’s what ice is doing to me,” 62-year-old Mark Tolvstad, President of the Aberdeen Curling Club

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“It comes to a point, where yes, I can get really annoying. I touch you a lot and I’m going to follow you everywhere.” Roncalli’s Olivia Hanson on her defensive philosophy

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“I made a deal with them. If we get a charge in a game, it’s donuts on me, and if we get four charges in a game, it’s ice cream cake on me. They get pretty fired up when we take a charge and you hear the whole team screaming ‘Donuts!’ So we’ve got multiple girls who are willing to take that hit.” – Herreid-Selby Area girls’ basketball coach Steve Sawinsky

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“It’s tough to see your guys in there crying and hurting. I told them I love them no matter what. There’s no one else I’d want to be hurting with. I’m crying with those guys. It hurts, but I told them if this is the worst thing that happens in your life, then you’re pretty darn lucky.” – White River boys’ basketball coach Eldon Marshall after his team lost in triple overtime to Lower Brule in the semifinals of the State B tournament

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“It doesn’t matter if they’re going to state or not. I just want to put every kid in the best position possible to feel like they’re improving.” – Ipswich track and field coach Todd Thorson

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“I love a good black eye, so I’m sporting it.” – SDSU’s Paiton Burckhard after the Jackrabbits won the WNIT championship, on not wearing a bandage on her eye that required stitches during a previous game.

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“You just have to relax, turn left and go fast. It’s kind of like NASCAR. – Northern State thrower Tanner Berg on his throwing technique after winning the hammer throw at the NSIC meet

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“They’re like well, if we go out in the wilderness, then Hollie will be able to protect us, but other than that, we don’t really care.” – Groton trapshooter Hollie Frost on what her friends thought of her shooting a gun

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“It’s a lot easier to make a good person a faster swimmer than it is to make a really fast swimmer, that doesn’t necessarily care about team environment, a better person.” – Northern State swim coach Kaden Huntrods on what he looks for in a recruit

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“Today was perfect weather and I ruined it by playing bad golf.” – Jon Murdy following his opening round in the Western Printing Pro-Am Golf Tournament

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“When I was racing, gas was getting to be $1.75 a gallon, and I said I think I’m going to quit.” – Race car driver Gregg Nelson on why he decided to stop racing back in 2003 because he thought the sport was getting too expensive

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“We used to send out VHS’s, but it was shot from the rafters of the Civic Arena and you couldn’t really even see what was going on. When I first started, they would send CDs, but now it’s all online, so that part has even evolved quite a bit.” – Presentation College volleyball coach Chelsey Albrecht on how recruiting has changed since she started coaching

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“I ate what I ate. I wasn’t doing protein shakes. I wasn’t doing anything. We ate Hardee’s. We ate Taco John’s. I would say training has changed a lot.” – former Milbank standout runner Jaime (Pauli) Appelwick of running in the mid 1990s

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“It looked good at first, but I didn’t expect it to go in because it never happens. I just gave it a shot and it happened. It was crazy.” – Aberdeen Central soccer goalie Camden Fauth after scoring a goal on a length of the field kick against Spearfish

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“You could see, they were fresh from playing Roncalli and we were fresh from Algebra.” – Aberdeen Central girls’ tennis coach John Vogel on his team’s slow start against St. Thomas More, noting his players had school right before the match

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“Kids that are his size aren’t typically as strong as he is. Kids that are as strong as he is, don’t usually move the way he does.” – Herreid-Selby Area football coach Clayton Randall on standout player Brenden Begeman

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“When I saw that he had about the same length as I did, I knew all I had to do was two-putt to win, so I thought to myself to just kind of ease it up there, easy two-putt. Instead, I just absolutely smoked it.” – Sioux Valley’s Kyan Overbo after he drilled a 20-foot putt to defeated Flandreau’s Kaden Burshiem to win a playoff for the Region 1A golf championship

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“It’s all about mental toughness. I had a coach that once said, there’s no bad weather, there’s only soft people.” – Aberdeen Christian cross country coach Livia Inches talking about the windy and cold conditions at the Region 1B meet

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“Whether you were his first runner or his 50^th runner on his cross country team, everyone felt important. What more can you say other than that?” – Aberdeen Central coach Jim Appl on his longtime friend and coaching partner the late Bill Martens

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“That was a designed run, but when I’m a quarterback I don’t know what I’m doing half the time and neither do they, so it works out in the end.” – Warner football player Hunter Cramer after scrambling around and then throwing a short-touchdown pass in a playoff victory over Harding County-Bison

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“We have a target on our back. You can’t beat around the bush. We know that. It’s pressure, but it’s also a sense of security. We’re here. We’re supposed to be here. We’re meant to be here. We can go in with that and just have that sense of confidence every play.” ­­- Warner setter Ava Nilsson of being the top-seeded team in the state volleyball tournament

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“It’s just like playing a state championship game. You get excited. You get fired up and anticipate things. You just do the best that you can do at the moment.” – Hitchcock-Tulare football coach Tom Salmen on what it was like responding to a call as a member of the Fargo Police Department