Sports!

To kick off my first weekend back at Cornell, I went to no less (and no more) than four pep band events for a total of more than fourteen hours of sports. As usual, Cornell athletics did not fail to disappoint, and even went undefeated at the events I attended.

During winter, there’s a hockey game pretty much every Friday night. This past weekend, the men’s team was at home, so we started with a game against St. Lawrence University, which is in Canada even further upstate New York than Cornell. Cornell started the game by scoring two goals within the first five minutes. Then St. Lawrence came back with two goals within a couple minutes. To end regulation time, Cornell and St. Lawrence traded goals twice, leaving the score tied at 4-4.

In overtime, Cornell had a penalty shot with half a minute to go. They missed, extending their streak of not scoring on penalty shots to 26 years, 9 months, and 27 days. (Not so fun fact from the game report: Cornell hasn’t scored on a penalty shot since February 27th, 1987.) St. Lawrence and their three fans were thrilled. The other 4,264 Cornell fans in Lynah, not so much. About 20 seconds later, to finish off the game, there was a fight. A St. Lawrence player was put into the penalty box, then taken out to be escorted off the ice by a ref. That, Cornell was happier about.

And then, to truly cap off the night, another fight almost broke out . . . as the teams were shaking hands after the game. Good sportsmanship, guys.

On Saturday, I went to my first women’s basketball game of the year. Their record is slightly above 0.500, but they managed to get their revenge dominate Columbia after a (relatively) close loss the week before. At one point Cornell was winning by 40 points, and the final score was 76-51. After a break to read my fluids textbook in the band room, I went to the second men’s hockey game of the weekend.

That game was against Clarkson, and they brought their band. Any time there’s another band, the general goal is to outplay them by being 1) louder, 2) better, and 3) generally more amazing. We were definitely the better band, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly unbiased opinion of Lynah.

As for the game itself, Cornell began not by scoring two goals, but by letting two goals in. It did not look good, especially when Cornell’s best shots in the first period both hit the post. Then in the second period, they started coming back and tied the game. About fifteen minutes into the second period, Cornell scored again, to make the score 3-2, which is how the game ended.

On Sunday I finished out the pep band weekend by attending wrestling. The first time I saw wrestling last year, I was extremely confused. This time, I was just confused. As it was my third time at wrestling, I did manage to follow along with most of the matches, but the finer points of scoring go under the general category of Sports!. I’m working on it. In the past couple of years, Cornell has seemed to have very strong wrestling teams, and Sunday did not prove the exception, as they beat Rutgers 29-6, winning eight out of the ten matches. It’s interesting to watch how the wrestlers increase in size as the meet goes on. They start out smaller than the coaches and end up looking down at the coaches. The heaviest weight class (285 lbs.) is also more than twice the lightest weight class (125 lbs.).

To conclude, there were some dominant performances from wrestling and women’s basketball. There were a couple crazy normal hockey games in Lynah, including a high-scoring tie and a come from behind victory. It was a good weekend for Cornell athletics. [Well, except maybe for men’s basketball, who are now 1 and 15. But hey, they finally won a game over winter break.]