It's clear a lot of people out there remember exactly where they were when the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets on Feb. 22, 1980. When ESPN.com asked our users to share their memories, we were overwhelmed not only with the number of responses but also with their thoughtfulness ... and length!

What's even more amazing is the similarity in experiences between people who were miles apart. Almost all of the hundreds of comments we received were worthy of being published, and below is a sampling of what you had to say about one of the biggest sporting moments in history:

I was 12 years old and glued to the TV with the rest of my family. The emotion was so high, I couldn't even sit on the sofa and opted for the floor. With less than five minutes to go and the game still very much in doubt, the anchor for the local ABC affiliate broke into the tape-delayed broadcast, and announced the final score. Although we were ecstatic with the result, we wanted her head on a stick. Twenty years later, we still do.

Rick Podrasky
McLean, Va.

I was 6 years old at a boys high school basketball game in North Dakota when the final score was announced over the PA system. I remember being shocked because, for the first time all night, the fans for both teams cheered for the same thing!

Clark Hjelmstad
St. Louis Park, Minn.

I was at a high school basketball game in upstate New York when there was a time out, and the PA announcer said, "For those of you interested in tonight's hockey game, the final score was the U.S. 4 and the Soviet Union 3." The place erupted and the basketball game was delayed as people ran onto the floor cheering. What a night. I don't even remember if our high school won that basketball game or not.

Jake Hermance
Dallas

I was 9 years old, watching the game with my folks and my friend's family. When the U.S. won, everyone was going crazy. We had a pee-wee game later that night. I didn't understand the importance of the moment until I saw people with a massive, homemade banner, waving American flags on the way to my pee-wee game. I will never forget that image. I remember how proud I was to be an American hockey player.

Scott Squires
Mesa, Ariz.

I was 11 years old, and my parents had recently divorced. My brother and I were staying with our dad for one of those "it's Dad's weekend" visits. We sat down, just the boys, to watch the hockey game. I guess it's the first real memory I have of enjoying sports with my dad. We were all jumping around, screaming, and chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A!" Somehow, when my brother and I went to bed that night, we knew that everything was going to be OK. Dad was still our dad, and the U.S. had bested the mighty Russians.

John Curry
Houston

I was one of the truly lucky people who was at the game. I had flown into Lake Placid that day to attend the final few days of the Olympics and planned to drive a vehicle back with a friend of mine, who was working for Motorola (a sponsor) at the Games. When I got there, he said there wasn't a ticket for me. But right before the game started, I was able to get a ticket from a guy at the bar right outside the stadium. He was too drunk to get up from his bar stool and offered me his ticket! Honest truth! It truly remains the greatest moment I have ever experienced as a spectator, and the wild celebration after the game, when hundreds of us passed around bottles and shouted USA! USA! well into the night, was a moment I'll never forget.

Robert Tretter
Pittsfield, Mass.

I was 5 years old at the time, growing up in Houston, but I distinctly remember the neighborhood kids going door to door to collect brooms and tennis balls, because of the lack of sticks and pucks, to reenact the game.

Patrick Sperry
Chicago

In February 1980, I was an impressionable 11-year-old in mid-Michigan. The town I lived in was a small farming community that had little money to support sports such as hockey, therefore, I knew little about it. What I did know is that every time I turned on the television, people in a far off land were burning my flag and chanting "Death to America." I watched my parents worry about making enough money to provide for their children as inflation continued to rise. I watched our President get on national television and confess that my country was broken and there was nothing he could do to fix it. At the time, there were few things to be proud about in America, and it appeared things were getting worse. The Olympic gold medal gave our family a renewed confidence in our country. My parents didn't seem to worry about things as much and our family life seemed to have less stress. I often wonder if the members of that team (kids themselves at the time) realize what it meant to an 11-year-old boy from Michigan to see so many American Flags being proudly displayed, not burned. I wonder if they realize what it meant to see a young man drape himself in the flag and skate around asking everyone "Where's my Father," so that he could share the moment. The 1980 Winter Olympics not only renewed my pride in America, but started a love affair with the sport of hockey that has still not faded. My den is decorated with favorite jersey's and pictures from over the years. My favorite item, however, is the framed poster of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey team. Someday, when my son is 11, I will sit him down and explain everything that poster means to me.

Lyle Tolfree II
National City, Mich.

My family did not turn on the TV, answer the phone or the door all day for fear of hearing the score before we watched the game on tape delay. In 1980, it was the most exciting game I had ever seen. It still is.

Paul O'Brien
Chicago

I was born in 1977, so I was a mere 3 years old when the Miracle on Ice happened. I remember laying on the living-room floor watching hockey on TV with my little brother when we heard my mom crying. My brother and I asked her, "Mommy, what's wrong?" All she said was, "We won! We won!" The Miracle on Ice is responsible for one of the earliest memories I'll ever have.

Tony Snyder
Grand Forks, N.D.

I was living in Omaha, Neb., at the time, and my wife and I were en route to a small town in southeast Iowa where her grandparents lived. I listened to the game real-time on the radio and could hardly keep the car on the snowy road with the excitement of the moment. Once we arrived at her grandparents' farm, I glued myself in front of the TV to watch the replay. It was still too exciting to believe, and tears actually came to my eyes once the final outcome was decided. To me, it was the most memorable sports event to happen in my lifetime, and I relive it every four years when the Winter Olympics come around.

David McCrary
Virginia Beach, Va.

I am one of the lucky few who can say they watched the game live on TV. My family was on a ski vacation in Canada, and CBC showed the game live. After the first period, I went over to the lodge to watch the game in the lobby. After I convinced a 6-year-old that this game was important he let me have the TV. At the end of the second period people started coming into the lodge for dinner. By the time the game ended there was not a person in the dining room; they were all in the bar or circled around the lobby TV.

David Nagelberg
East Brunswick, N.J.

I was 13-years old, watching the game with my parents. It was, is and always will be the greatest sports memory that I have known. You will never see an event like this again. When Mike Eruzione scored, there was a feeling that it could happen. When Al Michaels said "Do you believe in Miracles? Yes!", we knew it would happen. The greatest championship in the history of sports had taken place, and for days it was all me or my friends and family could talk about. Leading up to the games that Team USA would play, we would talk about it all day at school. After school, we would put our skates on, and my friends and I would become Team USA. Mark Johnson, Dave Silk, Jim Craig, Mike Eruzione, etc. would come alive on a sheet of ice in a park in New Jersey regularly after school. It's amazing to think that we, and I do mean "we," won that medal. An entire country forgot about its daily problems and rooted for the most unlikely of champions. The U.S. hockey team beating the mighty Soviet Union during that time in history? A moment that is truly historic and one that makes me feel good to be an American every time I think of the moment. A feat like that in today's rude, overpaid, "where's my money", superstar-athlete-controlled enviroment of sports? Only if it were still possible.

Andrew Cole
Midland Park, N.J.

What I remember most about the "Miracle on Ice" was that the game was actually played in the afternoon and replayed on television later that night. I stumbled onto the game while channel surfing on the radio, and tuned in just in time to hear the goal with one second left in the period, how they had to pull the Soviets out of the locker room to drop the puck because there was still time on the clock. And of course, the panic move of pulling Tretiak.

But I didn't want to listen to the game! I was still in high school, and my dad was still at work, and I wanted to watch the game with him when he got home. So, I turned off the radio, but it kept calling me. I think I went back and checked on the score once or twice, but eventually I was able to keep away from it. Until the news came on the television. I couldn't bear the suspense any more and just had to know the result before I burst. And what a thrill to hear the news. But that presented a new problem. I knew the score, and now my dad was getting home from work, and if anyone told him the result before he saw the tape delay, he'd go ballistic. So what a dilemma for me. But I played it real poker-faced. I remember being so stunned by the suddenness of that goal with one second left in the period that it still shocked me, even though I knew it was coming.

When Eruzione put the eventual game-winner in the net, I did my best to contain myself, and apparently I did. Poor dad kept waiting for the tying goal, waiting for a reason not to celebrate. Right up until Al Michaels' immortal words, and Ken Dryden's one-word response.

Jeff Kraus
Sterling, Va.

I was 6 years old in 1980. My family lived in Castro Valley, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco. I had never seen a hockey game before in my life before Feb. 22, 1980. Hockey was a foreign sport to the western half of the United States at the time. But on Feb. 22, a hockey fan was born. I watched the game late that night with my dad, in the downstairs unit of our house. As we watched the first period, I was completely mesmerized by what I was seeing: Players skating fast around the rink, turning at sharp angles ... the "tic-tac" sound of a crisp pass onto the blade of a teammate's stick ... the cat-like reflexes of Jim Craig, kicking a quick wrist shot aside. In between periods, I grabbed two badminton rackets, a ping pong ball and my baseball glove. With the racket in one hand and my glove in the other, I told my dad to shoot the ping pong ball at me and see if I could make the save. Shot after shot, I would pretend that I was on the ice at that very moment, playing the part of the hero and leading the U.S. team to victory.

I was only 6, but I knew enough about the Cold War to know that the Russians were the "bad guys." But for all I cared, the U.S. could have been playing Australia. The Cold War rivalry meant nothing to a 6-year-old kid. To me, all I could see were these 10 men skating around on the ice, playing the most incredibly exciting game I had ever seen. From that day forward I became a hockey fan. My mom and dad bought me books on the rules and history of the game. And because the Bay Area didn't have a team I decided to root for the N.Y. Islanders simply they had a "cool" name.

Now the Bay Area has the San Jose Sharks, and you can count me as one of their biggest fans even though I now live in Southern California. For fans, sports is a way in which we identify ourselves and a medium where we can scream our joy or cry our disappointment. As a fan, hockey has brought me so many wonderful memories, I can never forget where they all began: Feb. 22, 1980. It was a day that was special not just because it introduced me to hockey; but because I got to share it with my dad ... watching the U.S. defeat the mighty Russians, while making kick saves on ping pong balls.

John Spomer
Alpine, Calif.

My memory of "The Miracle" comes from a bunch of bananas. Dole bannanas had stickers on the bunches showing the various winter Olympic events of Lake Placid. I stole the sticker for Hockey off a bunch of bannanas and stuck it on my clock radio. I followed every single game knowing somehow this was going to be a special thing. When the U.S. beat a tough Czech team, I went to school excited. But my classmates didn't care. On the day the U.S. played the Soviets, since the game was not televised, a local radio station gave updates, so I knew the outcome way ahead of time. I am not a hockey fan, but I am familiar with some of the players out there. But to this day, I can pretty much remember most of the members of the 1980 U.S. hockey team. I feel there will never be another event like that because there is so much press and sports shows on TV and radio, that no team will be an underdog like this team was. And there would be live coverage of a major game like the U.S.-Soviet game. What adds to the lore is that it wasn't carried live. So those real fans had to get their updates the same way I did.

Bob Taylor
Omaha, Neb.

I can remember the Miracle as if it were frozen in time in that blue Lake Placid ice. A memory my brother and I would share a thousand more times in our backyard. I, the stoic goaltender Jim Craig, making a great kick-save against my brother, our hometown Toledo, Ohio, hero, Mike Eruzione. It's the kind of memory I hope every kid of every generation can enjoy, instilling pride in his country, his people, and himself. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Mike Dalton
Columbus, Ohio

I was born in June 1981, so I wasn't even conceived yet when the U.S. team beat the hated Russians. I didn't even know it ever happened until I was on vacation in Northern Minn., and my family stopped to visit the USA Hockey Hall of Fame when I was about 12. I sat down and watched a tape of the game. I was amazed. I had chills running down my spine, and I still do everytime I see or hear anything to do with that game. Since many of the players were from Minnesota, it gave me a great amount of pride to also be playing hockey in Minnesota. It's too bad the current system will never again to allow a bunch of rag-tag college age kids to shine in the spotlight of the nation like they did 20 years ago.

Jeff Yager
New Ulm, Minn.

As a high school hockey player in northern Minnesota, I was very familiar with most of the Minnesota natives on the team having followed Broten and Christian since they were in youth hockey. My high school team had a game that evening, and as we were dressing for the game, they started piping the radio broadcast of the game into the locker room. The USA had just scored to take the lead. For the next 10-plus minutes, 20 high school hockey players stood there, not moving, hardly even breathing, as if a single breath would break the spell. All we could do was look at each other in amazement and pray that time would speed by. When the final buzzer sounded, the noise from both locker rooms was unreal. As great as the game was, it meant even more being able to share it with friends and teammates, some of them I had played with for 12 years. I still get goosebumps every time anyone mentions the game.

Blake Monkman
Durand, Minn.