Hockey Time

As you may know pretty well, sports in college play an important role in individuals’ growing. All during the year, glory and pride are confronted between different college squads in different sports, such as basketball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, and football. However, here at Cornell there is specially one sport and one squad which we are proud to cheer in every one of their matches: Hockey.

Originally created in Canada, this sport has been popularized throughout the country; in the professional league, even desert states as Arizona or Texas have at least one franchise, and every year the end of the tournament leads many fans of this icy sport to become couch potatoes until a winner has been defined. Cornell’s Hockey team was born more than 100 years ago, and the female hockey team was one of the first to be created at the beginning of last century. The teams have brought to these beautiful hills the pride of several NCAA and ECAC championships. The glory of the Cornell hockey team peaked in one supreme moment when, in the 1969-1970 season, Cornell completed the tournament with a 29-0-0 record. Since 1964, the Cornell team has fed the NHL rows with 43 great players, 6 of whom were chosen during the 2002 draft by the teams of Atlanta (McRae, McRae, & Baby), Phoenix (LeNeveu), San Jose (Murray), and Toronto (Knoepfli). In the past two years the team became a national powerhouse. In the 2001/2002 season Cornell won the regular season ECAC title, only to loose the final in overtime to arch-enemy Harvard. Despite this loss Cornell received an invitation to the NCAA tournament. The team lost to New Hampshire in the quarterfinals after beating Quinnipiac. In the 2002/2003 season the Cornell Hockey team was ranked as the number 1 team of the country by ”U.S. College Hockey Online” as well as ”USA Today” for the first time in history. It claimed the ECAC title with ease and went on to its first Frozen Four appearance since 1980, routing MSU-Mankato 5-2, then beating Boston College 2-1 in double overtime. Unfortunately New Hampshire played the spoiler once again, as it destroyed the hopes for a National Title with a 3-2 victory over Cornell in the semi-final. You can find season tickets for the matches in mid September. This may be one of the best investments you can make all year. One word of warning: You will need a lot of endurance to get those tickets. It is not unusual that students wait in line for over 50 hours (yes you read correctly: FIFTY hours!) to get their beloved season tickets.

Check the Cornell Daily Sun for more information on how to get tickets in September. The procedure changes almost every year. If you don’t want to waste your precious time to get season tickets, you can either buy tickets from somebody who has season tickets but cannot attend the game or show up at Lynah Rink and buy tickets five minutes after the game started. You will be standing all the way in the back, though. But with all the home games likely sold out before the start of the season,it’s most likely your best option.