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.]

Straight, 29 High

You may have noticed that I like to reference things without really referencing them, as with my Link to the Past post.  In this case, I am not hopelessly uneducated about poker.  I am well aware that there is no card with the value of 29 in any typical poker game.  Rather, as promised, I’m about to discuss the recent schedule of the pep band.

In poker, a straight is having five cards in numerical order, such as a seven, eight, nine, ten, and a jack.  In terms of the pep band, straight refers to the five straight days of events we just had, starting last Friday and ending Tuesday, the 29^th of January, hence the “29 high.”

It began last Friday with men’s hockey vs. Yale.  The game stayed close and went into overtime.  Lynah wasn’t packed (especially the rows right in front of the band) but it was pretty crowded, and the Cornell fans wanted to see the team win their first home game in more than a month.  It didn’t happen.

Saturday was even worse.  While the women’s team was away beating Yale and Brown, the men’s team remained at home to be beaten by Yale and Brown.  And while the Yale game was at least close, Cornell was shut out and lost 3-0 to Brown.

On Sunday, the band was scheduled to play at wrestling.  Apparently when this happened last year, the band got to play approximately half a cheer.  We agreed to return to wrestling only with a promise that we would get playing time, so this time the event coordinators gave us ninety seconds between matches and some time midway through the matches.  Although we understood little to nothing about the scoring, it was actually fairly entertaining, and we got to see Cornell’s 3-time national champion wrestler.  Cornell ended up losing to Oregon State in the last match when Cornell’s wrestler, who was wrestling up a weight class, got pinned by having his head sat on (at least that’s what it looked like in the stands).

Monday was rehearsal, and Tuesday there was a women’s hockey game.  Tuesday night . . . they give them the best times in the rink.  Last semester I missed most of their games because they were scheduled for Friday afternoons, at the same time I had lab.

With a 4-0 victory, the women’s hockey team continues to be undefeated in Lynah this season, which is a lot more than the men’s team can say.  Our side of the rink was practically empty, and it was freezing because there were maybe a few hundred other fans in Lynah, total.  (This was still an improvement over the time we played at women’s basketball and the student section contained the band and three fans.  I’m not kidding.  Three.)  But besides the result of the women's hockey game, it was a sad weekend for Cornell sports fans.