ESPYS Red Carpet Superstitions

Laila Ali on the 2014 ESPYS Red Carpet (Photo by Rich Arden / ESPN Images)

*The full piece ran on Women’s Health. Click here to read more.

Sure, everyone has strange habits. But when a sports competition is your job, it makes sense that you might take your superstitions to the next level. So, we caught up with the athletes below at the 2014 ESPY Awards (short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards) earlier this week to ask if they have any superstitions for before a competition. The answer? Ohhh, yes, they do:

“Oh my gosh, Where do I begin? My roommate and I started this perfume thing before we left our hotel room, where we’d always spray it. At the field, I always place my bag in the far end of the corner—us pitchers are kind of known for crazy routines. I would always head out to the bullpen 27 minutes prior to game time because 27 was my number—that was part of my routine.” —Jennie Finch, Olympic softball gold medalist

“Before every game, I gotta eat a peanut butter and jelly, and I gotta pray. Gotta talk to my man upstairs.” —DeMarcus Cousins, Sacramento Kings center

“My boyfriend has to wear lucky socks (when I compete). It’s so funny. All the heats that I’ve lost this year so far, he hasn’t been wearing the socks—so it’s pretty much his fault when I lose! Today I actually went to Top Shop and bought some really cool pink dinosaur socks. They don’t have to be pink, they just looked like they had a lot of magic in them so I bought them.” —Carissa Moore, professional surfer and two-time Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) women’s world champion

“I have to shave my whole body, anytime I’m playing a football game. It does kinda make me feel fast like my hometown boy Michael Phelps. … We call it a manzillian.” —Brendon Ayanbadejo, Baltimore Ravens linebacker and SuperBowl XLVII champion (retired)

“I try to break all superstitions. I have to have my hair slicked back just because I’m jumping over hurdles. I hate it if hair is in my face, so a lot of times I carry a brush. And there’s been times where I’ve literally been, like, on the Olympic start line and one of the last things I do before I get on the box is brush my hair. People are probably thinking, ‘She’s so vain,’ but I get so annoyed if I see one flyaway. I guess that’s a superstition, but I think it’s more performance enhancement than anything else.” —Lolo Jones, Olympic bobsled and track and field athlete

“Before a big competition, I have to wear red boxers. They don’t have to be the same ones, as long as they are red. I think I won a couple contests in a row wearing them and then I was like, might as well keep this going.” —Nyjah Huston, professional skateboarder and 2014 ESPY winner for Best Male Action Sports Athlete

“I would have to say I listen to the same song before all my competitions, (by) Ghostland Observatory. It gives me that beat, and every time before I drop in, I make sure that one song is the one that’s playing. I did it this whole season, and I plan to carry it on. It used to be Shakira’s ‘She Wolf,’ but I moved on.” —Kaitlyn Farrington, Olympic gold medalist in the snowboarding halfpipe

“I just talk to my mom every day before a game, right before I go on the field. I’ve been doing that since I was like eight years old. I call her. We don’t talk about anything specific, that’s just what we do—not necessarily a pep talk but just real talk, you know what I mean? My mom always says, ‘Live for the day. You are where you are for a reason, and believe in yourself and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.’ Every time we go on the field, we warm up, we come in, do our team prayer, then we got two minutes before we go back out on the field, and I call her.” —Marcedes Lewis, Jacksonville Jaguars tight end

“When I’m warming up, if I miss something, it messes up the whole day. So it’s just like, if I’m stretching and I miss a stretch or do it out of order, I just feel like, ‘OK, the first quarter is going to be bad for me just ’cause I missed this.’ It’s not something you can go back and fix, you just try to add it in afterwards.” —Antonio Cromartie, Arizona Cardinals cornerback

“I don’t really have any superstitions, but my ritual is just to always get really focused and remember all of my hard work. I say my prayers and pray for the other girl that I don’t seriously hurt her. Because I’m trying to hurt her but I don’t want any permanent brain damage or things like that. I want to take her right to the limit, kickin’ that ass, right before anything permanent happens.” —Laila Ali, retired professional boxer and undefeated Super Middleweight Boxing Champion of the world

The full article ran on Women’s Health. Click here to read it in its entirety!